The Biden-Harris administration has recently allocated a federal grant to a program aimed at encouraging parents to affirm their child's self-chosen gender identity.
The grant, amounting to $850,000, is intended to support the Centerstones LGBTQI+ Family Support Program (Family+). The program's objective is to provide "affirming interventions for 230 youth and their families" and to train 100 staff members in delivering these interventions, as per the grant description.
As reported by the Daily Caller, the services will be provided at Centerstones Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The clinic is located near Fort Liberty Army Base, the largest U.S. Army installation, and Pope Air Force Base. The Family+ program will primarily serve the estimated 37,800 children of active duty military members and 82,475 Veteran households with children in the area.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), funds the grant. Centerstone's website, developed using grant funding, offers a variety of mental health resources. One of these resources encourages LGBTQ-identifying individuals to "set goals" to reduce the impact of "minority stress."
Centerstone has stated that the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic is committed to serving all members of the military community for any mental health needs they may have. SAMHSA, when asked about the program, referred to the goal outlined in its notice of funding opportunity (NOFO). The NOFO states that SAMHSA's aim with this program is to prevent or alleviate the development of serious mental health and substance use conditions and disorders and build healthy futures for LGBTQI+ youth by increasing family acceptance and support.
One of the key interventions that the Family+ program will implement is Affirm Caregiver. This intervention aims to enhance parents' affirmative caregiving attitudes and behaviors, as well as their confidence in their abilities to engage in affirmative caregiving skills with LGBTQ+ youth. This is according to the National Center for Youth with Diverse Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression.
The Affirm Caregiver intervention was tested among foster care parents in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The pilot program, funded as part of a 5-year, $10 million federal grant project awarded in 2016, was found to be effective in persuading parents to adopt affirmative caregiving behaviors.
The Affirm Caregiver intervention encourages participants to understand that being affirmative is not merely the absence of homophobia and trans-phobia, but rather the presence of clear, explicit, and consistent identity-affirming attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Participants are encouraged to explore and reflect upon the implicit and explicit biases they have absorbed from familial, societal, and cultural messages since childhood that may affect their current caregiving attitudes and behaviors.
Before the program, caregivers are given a survey to rate their confidence in areas such as establishing a "safe space" for LGBTQ identities or providing "identity affirming support" to youth. This information was obtained from a document previously acquired by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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