LGBTQ plus Affirmative State Care for Young People in Sweden : New Knowledge and Old Traditions

• Young LGBTQ+ people are over-represented in various forms of state care. They experience hardships during their placements and staff competence in addressing specific needs among LGBTQ+ youth is lacking. In this article, we investigate whether and how LGTBQ+ issues are considered and described in digital marketing for state care providers. The material consists of the homepages of residential care homes and secure state care institutions, which we analyse using critical discourse analysis. The results show that LGBTQ+ issues are largely invisible. Of the approximately 1,000 existing state care providers, only twenty stated that they worked with or had competence in LGBTQ+ issues. Among these, no secure state care institution offered LGBTQ+ competence at the time of the study. The descriptions of how care providers work with LGBTQ+ issues are characterised by heteronormativity where there is a mix of two types of language on the homepages regarding LGBTQ+ youth; on the one hand, a heteronormative, traditional description based on a binary understanding of gender; and, on the other, an LGBTQ+ inclusive language is used. However, the LGBTQ+ affirmative language has been imposed upon the traditional rather than being integrated into it, which comes across as superficial and unclear. International studies show that LGBTQ+ youth are over-represented in various forms of state care. Using critical discourse analysis, we investigated how LGBTQ+ youth, as a target group, are described and how LGBTQ+ competence is presented on the home pages of residential care homes and secure state care institutions for young people in Sweden. The results show that LGBTQ is largely invisible. Of the approximately 1,000 existing residential care homes, only 20 stated that they worked with or had competence in LGBTQ+ issues. No secure state care institution offered LGBTQ+ competence at the time of the study.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

critical discourse analysis

LGBTQ

state care

Sweden

youth

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)