The Beat: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Questioning Youth
In February, the Guttmacher Institute released “Facts on American Teens' Sexual and Reproductive Health,” a survey of over two-dozen recent studies and publications on the topic of adolescent sexual behavior. This is the first such survey from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that promotes sexual and reproductive health, since 2009.
Laura Lindberg, a senior research associate at Guttmacher, spoke with NCFY about the report’s implications for youth workers and organizations that aim to prevent teen preganancy.
NCFY: Can you summarize the general trends in teen pregnancy and contraception?
LINDBERG: The major trends are first, a decline in teen pregnancy over the last two decades. It’s been declining relatively steadily since a high in 1991...
Poetry is powerful. Clinical psychologist Rebecca Chalmers sees that power whenever she uses poetry as a therapeutic tool.
“When young people share a poem they’ve written, and everyone says that it’s beautiful, that’s supporting who they are and how they’re able to intellectually and emotionally express themselves, and that feels so good,” says Chalmers, who practices in New York and has a Master of Fine Arts in poetry.
As a mode of expression, poetry is tailor-made for teens. “Poetry is very immediate and about the self and helps sort out ‘who I am’ in a way that speaks to them,” Chalmers says. And working on poetry with a group of other youth can feed teens’ need to relate, she says. “By the time they’ve written something and shared it with other group members and gotten that supportive feedback, they form such a bond.”
...School should be a safe space for all students to learn. But too often lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth are taunted and bullied in class, the hallways and the schoolyard.
A new online workshop from national sex education organization Answer focuses on making schools more inclusive and increasing awareness of LGBTQ issues. Called LGBTQ Issues in Schools, the workshop provides strategies, resources, and interactive exercises for health professionals and teachers working with middle school and high school students. It also highlights the importance of acknowledging LGBTQ youth in life education and health classes. And it provides specific suggestions for incorporating LGBTQ issues...
The host home program for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth run by Family and Youth Services Bureau grantee Avenues for Homeless Youth was spotlighted in a recent PBS video, "Feels Like Home: Helping Homeless LGBT Youth."
The Minneapolis, MI, program has placed over 100 youth in temporary homes since it started in the late 1990s. Volunteer host families welcome youth into their homes for an average of 8 months after going through extensive training and background checks. The program has become the prototype for a handful of similar programs around the country.
The video features Program Coordinator Rocki Simões, a host and youth brought together by the program, and Commissioner Bryan Samuels of the Administration on Children, Youth...
This month, a new federal rule went into effect requiring any program funded or insured by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide equal access to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. NCFY spoke with Ben Gray, an attorney and Presidential Management Fellow in HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, to find out how the Equal Access to Housing rule will benefit young people.
NCFY: What should people who work with homeless or transitioning youth know about the rule?
Gray: There are two parts of the rule that are going to be most pertinent to their work. The first is the general equal access provision, which says that housing that is assisted or insured by HUD has to be...
Cyberbullying, or online bullying, is oft-reported in the news. But what is it, exactly? To clarify the issue for adults, young writers from the online magazine YCTeen recently discussed their experiences and views of abuse and bad behavior online. They address why youth bully and others watch, how youth can respond, and how teachers and parents can help.
If you know a youth who has bullied or been bullied, please encourage the young person to call 1-800-RUNAWAY or visit www.1800RUNAWAY.org to talk about it.
...Q. “Most of the literature about how to best serve lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth lumps them all together. What are some tips for working with transgender and gender non-conforming youth?”
A. Transgender youth, who do not identify with their biological sex, and youth who don’t conform to our society’s gender expectations differ from lesbian, gay and bisexual youth in two important ways, says Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights. First, they often need access to hormone treatment to help them express their true gender identities. And second, they need safe spaces in which youth workers and other youth respect all gender expressions.
“For a young person who is truly transgender, the inner compulsion to live as the other gender is very strong,”...
It seems as though every day we see tragic stories of bullied teens in the news. But what's the real extent of bullying among U.S. teens? The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics recently released “Student Reports of Bullying and Cyber Bullying: Results From the 2009 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey.” The report includes Web tables that show the relationship between bullying (and cyber-bullying) and other variables such as the reported presence of gangs, guns, drugs and alcohol at school; school security measures; and students' fearfulness, fighting, and weapon-carrying at school.
Key findings from the study include the following:
- More than one quarter of students ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied at school during the 2008-09 school year...
"Struggling to Survive: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer/Questioning Homeless Youth on the Streets of California" (PDF, 1496KB), California Homeless Youth Project, March 2011.
What it’s about: This report discusses the reasons lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning, or LGBTQ, youth become homeless and the special challenges they face on the street.
Why read it: LGBTQ youth are over-represented among homeless youth. Once on the street, they are more likely than other youth to experience hate crimes and other trauma, be sexually exploited, engage in survival sex, use drugs and have mental health problems. Youth workers need to understand the particular dangers homeless LGBTQ young people face in order to help them...
Many communities report a spike in the number of youth who run away as the holidays approach, due to conflict at home and problems at school. "The first part of the holidays, the number of young people running away seems to go down, because kids and families really want to be together and make it work," says Susan Harmon of National Safe Place, a network of organizations working to keep young people off the streets. "But then the stressors come back, and we do see more youth running away."
The National Runaway Switchboard, a hotline for youth and those who care about them, gets the most calls from youth in crisis during the summer, says Gordon Vance, NRS's director of services, not in the...
