“Hide” and “Seek”: The Survival Strategies of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adolescents In Residential Facilities

Background and Purpose: While international scholarship has examined sexual minority youth in substitute care systems to assess whether current service methods meet their needs, a significant gap exists in Taiwan, underscoring the importance of conducting research within the local context. This study employed a phenomenological approach to explore the lived experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals in Taiwanese residential care facilities, highlighting how domestic contexts shape their service needs.

Methods: Four in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with LGB Taiwanese adults who resided in facilities for at least three months during adolescence, including one lesbian woman, two gay men, and one bisexual woman. Participants were recruited via posts on social media websites. To ensure psychological safety and confidentiality, all four interviews were conducted in participant-selected settings, including cafés and private rooms. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed online and analyzed through a coding process using the thematic analysis method.

Findings: Results first introduced participants’ backgrounds and their pathways into residential facilities. Participants utilized several strategies to survive within the facilities, including their decision-making processes regarding coming out in these settings, coping strategies for concealing sexual orientation, and perceptions of how professionals and peers addressed gender and sexuality issues. Participants’ reflections revealed a lack of gender-friendly resources in these environments, demonstrating their proactive efforts to fulfill the needs for self-exploration and to pursue intimate relationships while facing non-affirming workers and restrictive facility rules. The data highlighted a specific tension between the participants’ developmental needs for identity exploration and the facilities’ emphasis on ‘protection,’ which often resulted in a pathological view of LGB identities by care providers.

Conclusion and Implications: The study reconstructed how these adolescents were served. It further discussed their expectations and identified critical service gaps while in care, especially the lack of SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity and expression) affirming policies in care facilities and the heteronormative assumptions of care providers. Findings suggest a critical need for culturally competent professional training and the implementation of inclusive policies to transform residential care facilities into supportive environments for LGB adolescents. Furthermore, these results suggest that Taiwanese child welfare policy could benefit from integrating SOGIE-inclusive language into national residential care standards. By providing an empirical foundation for the experiences of LGB youth, this study supports a shift from ‘gender-blind’ practices toward an inclusive care model that addresses the specific developmental needs and protections of sexual minority youth within the child welfare system.