D.C. officials recently announced that they would create a program in which gay adults would mentor 15- to 18-year-olds in foster care who say they are gay or are questioning their sexuality. Wanda Alston, director of the Mayor's Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Affairs, which was created Sept. 8, is facilitating the new program.
"We decided to start this program because judges saw the need for it and suggested the idea to us," Alston said.
Teens in foster care who are "high risk or self-identified as LGBT or questioning their sexuality" will participate in the program, Metro Weekly quotes Alston as saying Sept. 16. Alston said D.C. Family Court judges would recommend children for the mentoring program if the child has a problem and the judge sees a pattern that would lead him to conclude the child is unsure of his or her sexuality. The court has told Alston that about 100 of the 3,000 children in the system would benefit from LGBT mentoring, Metro Weekly reported.
Critics argue that the program would essentially be recruiting foster children into homosexuality, Alston said.
However, she said the program would not do that and would not necessarily focus on the child's sexuality, but whatever problem the child might have instead. The idea is that by the mentor being gay, the child will have an adult he can respect and relate to and then hopefully work out his problem, she said.
"The goal is not to recruit kids into homosexuality, but to help the kids solve their problem," Alston said. "I wish I had something like this when I was 17 and realized I was a lesbian."
Mindy Michels, director of AU's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Ally Resource Center, supports the program.
"The program sounds like a great idea, and is something that is definitely needed," she said.
The mentors for this program would all be volunteers, spending around 10 hours a week to help a child. All potential mentors would go through background checks, interviews and training. Alston would recruit potential mentors and the D.C. Family Court would screen them, according to a Sept. 9 Washington Times article.
Alston said that as far as she knows, this will be a revolutionary program. Though it is still in the planning stages, she hopes to have it started in four to six months.
Her office is currently working with the D.C. Children and Family Administration and other nonprofits to do the administrative work for the program.
The program would be confined to children within the D.C. foster care system only, since it would be D.C. judges who refer the kids to the program.
Alston has been working for two years as Mayor Anthony Williams' special assistant on LGBT affairs.
"We join cities like Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, which all have offices or senior officials designated to address LGBT health," Williams said in a press release Sept. 8.
The purpose of the office is to serve as a liaison between the mayor and the city's homosexual community, to identify its needs, collect and distribute research regarding public policies and legislation that affect D.C.'s gay community, and advise the mayor on such policies, according to the mayor's statement.
