The pandemic widened a gap in services for gender-nonconforming youth that Jayson “J.D.” Miller has noticed all their life.
Miller is a social worker who leads a growing child and family therapy clinic for underserved LGBTQ youth up to age 21 at the New York Foundling, one of only a handful of its kind in the entire state. The program, which grew out of a support group for children who had been cut off from services during the Covid-19 lockdown, is informed by Miller’s own childhood moving between caregivers and struggling to find mental health treatment as a queer young person on the West Coast.
“Instead that support came from the community around me,” said Miller, the organization’s founder and director of the Identity & Acceptance program.
Miller has sought to reflect that in their work, launching the initiative to fill a niche in an otherwise sparse landscape of services tailored to LGBTQ children of color in foster care. Demand for the program, which is backed by a state grant, is booming as President Donald Trump takes aim at federal funding for gender-affirming care providers.
Although Miller’s funding is secured with a five-year grant, they acknowledge the rough seas ahead for the wider network of providers of gender-affirming care in New York.
“I’m very thankful that right now we’re not at risk for that but I always worry about the other orgs that we partner with,” they said.
Miller started at the Foundling as a case planner in its foster care program in 2016 and later became a clinical psychotherapist. Even with a caseload of 20, Miller strived to reach more struggling young people with better-fitting services, beginning with gestures as simple as offering a bowl of candy in their office.
“That always helped to get people in the door and get them talking,” said Miller, who is certified in a range of clinical services for people with post-traumatic stress disorder and those on the autism spectrum.
Growing up, Miller struggled with self-harm and other mental health challenges that eventually led to court-ordered therapy. The approach did not help, they recalled, in part because clinicians blamed their situation on what was at the time their queer identity. Miller now identifies as trans.
Miller received a bachelor’s degree in social work from San Francisco State before landing in New York, where they continued with a master’s at Columbia University and a second bachelor’s in sociology and women and gender studies at Brooklyn College. They are now enrolled in a master’s program in human development research and policy at NYU, expecting to graduate in May.
When the pandemic hit, the kids that would typically pop into their office at the Foundling stopped coming. Because many of them did not go by their legal name, Miller had no way to reach them and worried that they were not being treated. The experience once again highlighted how porous the safety net can be for LGBTQ children in the child-welfare system.
In response, Miller launched a virtual support group for LGBTQ youth who were receiving services in the Foundling’s foster care system in November 2020. By its third year, the program had grown to provide individual and group therapy to children in foster care at the Foundling and other agencies, and integrated into the organization’s larger community mental health clinic.
Enrollment in the Identity & Acceptance program has jumped this year, reaching 42 clients in the past five months, compared to 49 in the preceding 12. The clientele is from all five boroughs, 4 out of 5 of whom identify as a person of color.
“We want to make sure that everyone knows that there’s a space for them here because the rest of the world may not act like that all the time,” they said. “But this is one [place] where it’s true.”
