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Jonathan Post, a gay college student, lived for years as a foster child within Georgia’s child welfare system. (Photo courtesy of Post)
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| Gay-inclusive foster care resource agencies
Multi-Agency Alliance for Children
100 Edgewood Ave
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-880-9323
www.maac4kids.org
CHRIS Kids
3109 Clairmont Rd NE Suite B
Atlanta, GA 30329
404-564-3411
www.chriskids.org
Creative Community Services
4487 Park Dr Suite A
Norcross, GA 30093
770-469-6226
www.ccsgeorgia.org
Twin Cedars Youth Services
LaGrange, GA
706-298-2148 ext. 112
www.twincedars.org
Gwinnett Children’s Shelter
P.O. Box 527
Buford, GA 30515
678-546-8770
www.gwinnettchildrenshelter.org
Spectrum Community Services
P.O. Box 539
Avondale Estates, GA 30002
spectrumcs@aol.com
Georgia Parent Support Network
1381 Metropolitan Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30310
www.gpsn.org
More info:
MEGA Family Project
P.O. Box 29631
Atlanta, GA 30359
404-808-3350
www.megafamilyproject.org |
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HOME > NEWS > LOCAL
By: ZACK HUDSON
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It’s been about five years since Jonathan Post emerged from a series of three homes in Georgia’s foster care and child welfare system. In that time, Post, now 23 and a college senior, has worked on building his future and rebuilding his relationship with his birth parents.
“A lot of it at the beginning of the foster stuff was actually related to me being gay,” he said.
Post considers himself lucky for the time he spent in foster care. He never officially came out to any adults during his time within the system, and feels that he emerged from foster care relatively unscathed because of it.
“I was already dealing with a lot of other issues, and adding coming out as gay to it would have made it very complicated then,” he said.
But in the decade since Post entered Georgia’s foster care system, more and more gay kids are choosing to come out, according to Sandy Corbin, clinical director for the Multi-Agency Alliance for Children, a privatized foster care service provider with state contracts to serve about 100 primary child clients at any given time.
And as gay political groups gear up to fight any attempt to ban gay people from adopting in Georgia, child advocates like Corbin fear the potential impact of a ban on gay foster children, who already face a dearth of accepting homes.
"There’s at least 10 percent of our kids who are either out or questioning,” she said. “The number of out kids has risen."
Corbin spoke last month at a seminar for prospective foster parents hosted by MEGA Family Project, a resource group for gay parents, in hopes of recruiting more gay and gay-friendly foster families.
“Coming out is a difficult process on its own. And you need people you can trust and you need people who you feel safe around,” Corbin said.
More than 20 people attended the MEGA meeting, many with legal questions about the status of gay foster and adoptive parents.
“What if it’s a situation where I get a kid I have taken in who gets taken away from me,” asked Trenelle Sweat, a lesbian who is already a mother.
Sweat’s concern is valid, according to leaders at Georgia Equality, the state’s largest gay rights organization. While no state legislator has stepped forward with plans to introduce anti-gay adoption legislation in the 2008 legislative session, the threat of a gay adoption ban remains real, according to GE Political Director Kyle Bailey.
“Georgia Equality has been working for the past two years with a broad and diverse coalition of community leaders and representatives from the foster care and adoption communities to ensure that judges, not legislators, have the authority to decide what is in the best interest of an individual child in a specific situation,” Bailey said.
MEGA Family Project has another foster parent and adoption information session planned for October, although a final date had not been set at press time.
The attendance at last month's session indicates strong interest in the subject from gay men and lesbians, MEGA Executive Director Kathy Kelly said.
“LGBT people, like anybody else, want to protect their families, and they want to build their families and offer help to kids that need it,” she said.
Georgia's foster care system does not provide specific resources for gay kids, according to Coley Lambert, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Human Resources, which oversees Georgia’s child welfare system.
“We work to achieve the health, wellness, and well-being of all the minors within our care and custody,” Lambert said.
The gay children who end up in foster care within metro Atlanta sometimes have at least limited access to programs like YouthPride and specialized counseling and medical services, although those in other parts of the state often aren't as lucky.
Post spent about four years — between ages 14 and 18 — in the care of foster parents in metro Atlanta after life at home with his mother fell apart. He was unaware of it at the time, but being a gay child in a foster care situation allowed him more protection from certain kinds of anti-gay prejudice than other gay kids living outside of the foster care system.
“The state would be more inclined to safeguard the rights of a foster child through equal ...
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