Coming out in the Care System in England: Participatory Research with Care Experienced LGBTQ+ Young People

Objectives

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and questioning (LGBTQ) young people growing up in the care system face a range of challenges shared by other care experienced young people – but they also have additional challenges in managing their minority identities and coping with stigma. Research suggests that LGBT young people in the care system face challenges such as homophobic and transphobic bullying and violence and inadequate responses to their needs by professionals and carers.

This presentation will draw on findings from a national study in England funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council from 2014-2017, with follow up funding from the National Institute of Health Research, CLAHRC 2017-18. The study focused on how LGBTQ+ young people negotiate their identities in a particular context, that of growing up in the care system in England, and the support they receive.

Methods

Interviews with 46 LGBTQ+ young people provided life stories of their pathways from birth families through the care system. This approach attempted to remain open to young people’s ways of describing their experiences and identities rather than imposing a particular set of assumptions about sexual orientation or gender upon them, thus ensuring that the analysis could also incorporate other intersectional aspects of identity that young people made relevant in the interview, such as ethnicity and religious affiliation.

The research team included young researchers who identified as LGBTQ+ and had experience of living in care. They were involved at all stages of the research process including the analysis, to encourage a more sensitive and diverse reading of the data. Follow up funding was used to undertake a participatory film project with six of the young researcher team. The presentation will focus on the work with the young researcher team and present the short-animated film.

Results

The short-animated film will be presented. The film will be contextualized with brief discussion of the how the findings of the narrative interviews were used in the creation of the film.

Conclusions

There will be discussion of the importance and challenges of recognising young people’s agency within the research process, as well as the importance of LGBTQ+ young people’s perspectives as a topic for research.