Ep 72: Pride in Every Home

In this special Pride Month episode of Fostering Conversations, host Amy Smith speaks with Jessica and Giselle, a Utah foster care couple, about their journey into fostering and building a loving, inclusive family. They share how a chance encounter at a community event led them to foster care, ultimately resulting in the adoption of their first placement and the addition of another sibling to their home. Their story highlights the importance of representation, support, and belonging for children in care, especially those who identify as LGBTQ+. This episode explores: What it’s like to foster as an LGBTQ+ family Why belonging matters for every child How foster parents can support youth who come out The role of community, acceptance, and chosen family Simple ways anyone can be an ally Jessica and Giselle offer practical advice for foster parents and encouraging words for youth navigating identity and acceptance. Their message is clear: every child deserves to feel safe, celebrated, and loved. Learn more about supporting LGBTQ+ youth in foster care: Visit the Utah Foster Care LGBTQ+ Resource Page Transcript: ep72_jun26 [00:00:00] Happy Pride Month. This episode, we’re talking with Jessica and Giselle, a local lesbian couple who shares their insights on what it’s like to be part of the LGBTQ+ community Amy: Welcome to Fostering Conversations. I’m your host, Amy Smith. Today we have Jessica and Giselle who are licensed Utah foster care parents, and we are excited to have them. Thanks for being with us today. Jessica: Thank you. We’re excited to be here. Amy: It’s June, it’s Pride Month, and you are a local L-G-B-T-Q family, and we are excited to get your perspective on what that is like. So tell us a little bit about what got you into fostering. Just give us [00:01:00] a little bit of background so our listeners kind of know who they’re listening to. Jessica: Yeah, I’m Jessica, my wife Giselle is right here with me. We have always wanted a family. We’ve been together almost six years and we just, we always knew that we wanted kids eventually. As you do know, there are lots of ways for LGBTQ plus families to start a family, And we started really looking into all the options. We looked into adoption, we looked into IVF, we did look into foster care a little bit initially and. We kind of were thinking it was gonna go a different route. We actually went in 2023 on Mother’s Day. We went to the zoo where they were having a Mother’s day celebration. And there were different organizations there. And we had gotten an email from the zoo and they said that someone was there and they were gonna be giving away. an IVF. To a family so you could enter into this contest and you could potentially win the chance to do IVF because as a lot of you know, it’s not cheap. We thought, let’s go, let’s take our chances, l...