Isabella Morningstar talks with Marcus Anthony, a case manager at Thrive Youth Center in San Antonio as he looks for an update on her new birth certificate. After she aged out of the foster care system in 2020, she had a difficult time updating her paperwork to reflect her legal name and gender marker.
Yet Texas’ Child Protective Services doesn’t track the sexual orientation or gender identity of youth in foster care. And as state leaders prioritized legislating everything from transgender kids’ access to certain health care and the places drag queens can perform, they also quietly stalled efforts to better train adults charged with caring for trans foster youth.
Trans Texans, though, say those attempts further marginalize an already vulnerable part of the population. And for trans people who age out of the foster care system, that kind of stigma worsens an already tenuous struggle to build an adult life without the kind of familial, financial and social support upon which most young adults depend.
“You cannot come to a person who has this part of their identity that has substantially impacted their life and tell them, ‘Well we’re not going to talk about that,’” Mehrhof said. “You’re asking them to either hide or deny part of who they are.”Isabella Morningstar was 14 when her adoptive mother of nearly a decade refused to let the teenager continue living with her — a decision that kick-started a cycle of displacement.
Over the next four years, the vitriol from adults who were supposed to provide a safe and stable home conditioned Morningstar to expect people around her would put in little effort to understand her. Last week, a federal judge fined the Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees DFPS, $100,000 per day in fines for neglecting investigations into allegations of abuse of children in foster care.
Asher’s dad refused to come to terms with the fact that he had a trans son. Their relationship fell apart, and Asher’s mental health deteriorated with it. That same year, DFPS quietly altered their Foster Care Bill of Rights, a document outlining how children should be treated in the state’s care. The agency, whose top official is appointed by the governor, removed mentions of protections specific to gender identity and sexual orientation.
Texas Politics Texas Policy Texas Government Demographics Politics State Government Child Protective Services Department Of Family And Protective Services Greg Abbott Ken Paxton LGBTQ 88Th Legislative Session
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