Hi - I’m the Policy Research Director at the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) (www.lgbtmap.org), which is a national think tank organization that is focused on LGBT issues and policy. I’m reaching out to see if you might be able to help us, and would so appreciate it if you would take a moment to see if you can!
MAP is collaborating with the Center for American Progress and the Family Equality Council to co-author a series of reports that highlight how being part of an LGBT family in the U.S. creates unique challenges.
For an upcoming report on how government safety net programs are failing children who live in LGBT families that includes policy recommendations, we are specifically looking for stories that include the following:
· LGBT-headed families who have had challenges with accessing government safety net programs like TANF, SNAP, School Lunch, WIC, and children’s Medicaid and health programs, SSI, child care assistance, public housing, and early childhood programs like Head Start.
· Challenges might have resulted from the way that family was defined, income restrictions, legal recognition of parents, discrimination during the application process, or other reasons.
· We are particularly interested in stories that also include special issues for transgender parents, and added challenges and unique experiences of LGBT families of color, rural families, and immigrant LGBT families.
· Finally, given the recent 2010 census data for the 12 top states where LGBT parents are raising children, we are particularly interested in stories from Mississippi, Wyoming, Alaska, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, Montana, South Dakota, and South Carolina.
Our goal is to include fresh, compelling stories of real LGBT families that will give the report emotional resonance and might also be used to gain media attention. The stories can already be in written form or could be shared with us in telephone interviews. They can be stories already covered by the media, but new, unfeatured stories are a bonus. Attribution of the stories can range from sharing them anonymously to the possibility of speaking to the media as part of the report rollout in the Winter of 2012.
Because our report focuses on the entire family, we’re only looking for same-sex parents who are raising kids.
If you have any stories to share would you just reply to this email so that we can set up a time to talk? And, if you don’t but know of others that might (e.g. faith-based, legal or other LGBT orgs), would you please forward this for me?
Thank you so much for any help you can give!
--Laura
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Laura Deaton
Policy Research Director
Movement Advancement Project
888-784-3433
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p.s. Here is an example of a story that we wrote up, adapted from an academic article:
Family Left Destitute After Being Denied Social Security Survivor Benefits
In 1998, Nicolaj Caracappa was born through donor insemination to New Jersey couple Eva Kadray and Camille Caracappa. Eva gave birth to Nic, who was given Camille’s last name and baptized in Camille’s Catholic faith. Eva became a stay-at-home mom while Camille continued working as an oncology nurse. The couple wanted a second child. They consulted a lawyer about completing a second-parent adoption of Nic by Camille, but they decided to wait until their second child was born so they could adopt both children at the same time. Yet they never got the chance. When Nic was two years old, Camille left for work one day and never came home. She suffered a brain aneurysm and was dead by nightfall.
Eva applied for child Social Security survivor benefits for Nic. Those benefits—many thousands of dollars a year—are designed to compensate a child for the economic loss of a parent. The benefits were denied because Camille had not been Nic’s legal parent. If New Jersey had simply recognized Camille as Nic’s legal parent upon his birth, the result would have been different. Nic’s emotional catastrophe—the loss of a parent—would not have been compounded by economic catastrophe—the loss of all the family’s income.
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