I have worked with children and families for 12 years and have observed first-hand, the need for loving and skilled adoptive and foster homes.  When I child falls into the position of having no available and appropriate caretakers in their immediate or extended family, they are faced with the daunting process of locating a family who will choose to accept them and promise to care for them forever.  It is not that easy to find families who have the skills and determination to raise a child with whatever emotional and behavioral problems they have developed because of their maltreatment.  It is also not that easy for a child to accept the care and love of a new family because of the mistrust they have experienced for most of their lives.  Even the most dedicated foster and adoptive families will be pushed to their limits, and the most loving and adorable child will have to directly face their fears of rejection, and hopefully overcome them so they can receive the love their foster or adoptive family has to offer.  Given the tediousness of this matching and bonding process, Social Services should be prepared to recruit families without discrimination to maximize the number of families and provide as many options as possible for matching a child with the right family.  Good social workers are always attentive to the specific cultural, emotional and behavioral needs of a child, and would never match a child to any home that would not be successful for them (i.e., if a child was raised with strong values that same sex relationships are wrong, it would not be appropriate to match a child to a same sex adoptive couple).  Furthermore, in our efforts to expand the self esteems of the children we have placed in foster care and adoptive families, it makes sense to show our LGBT foster and adoptive youth that Social Services values them by representing LGBT parents among foster and adoptive homes that we provide.