Elevating Queer & Trans Youth (EQTY): An LGBTQ Homeless Youth Capacity Building Project
Year One Report Prepared For:
Submitted By:
Pride Foundation
Shannon Perez-Darby, NWN Youth Program Director
2014 E. Madison St. Suite 300 Seattle, WA 98122
Breona Mendoza, NWN Youth Advocate Carrie Lippy, PhD, Evaluation Consultant Connie Burk, NWN Executive Director
Table of Contents Project Overview…………………………………………………………3 Project Highlights………………………………………………………..3 Year One: Project Activities………………………………………...4 Training & Strategy Session 1:……………………………………..4 Training & Strategy Session 2:……………………………………..4 Year One: Evaluations Activities………………..…………………4 What We've Learned Thus Far……………………………………..5 Lesson 1: Including the T in LGBT.…………………………….….5 Lesson 2: Inviting LGBTQ youth to our services……………5 Lesson 3: Addressing the intersection of violence and homelessness for LGBTQ youth…………………………..……….6 Lesson 4: Institutionalizing LGBTQ competence…………..6 Lesson 5: Building partnerships on a strong foundation of trust………….………………………………………………………….6-7 Recommendations……………………………………………………8-9 What's Ahead………………………………………………………………9 @2005 Cristy Road Artwork used with artist permission www.croadcore.org
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Project Overview
Project EQTY works with regional service providers to both assess our region’s current capacity to meet the unique needs of LGBTQ homeless youth, and build our capacity to provide competent and explicit services to LGBTQ homeless and unstably housed young people. Project EQTY aims to address many of the underlying conditions that lead to the overrepresentation of homeless LGBTQ youth and youth of color. The Northwest Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian and Gay Survivors of Abuse will be leveraging tools and lessons learned from Demonstrate Access: A Regional Response to Increasing Access to Service for LGBTQ Victims of Crime, an OVCfunded national demonstration project developed by the “We want to find a good balance to accept [and] Northwest Network and the King County Coalition Against welcome all youth, Domestic Violence. While not a youth specific project, a without alienating [or] number of youth serving organizations signed up as provoking other youth.”participants in the “Access Site” intervention (a 1 –year EQTY Project Partner limited intervention focused on 1-3 policy, practice, or organizational changes to increase LGBTQ access to services in each organization), highlighting the unmet need for training and technical assistance for regional youth serving organizations to increase and refine their ability to better support LGBTQ youth.
Project Highlights
Each organization completed a comprehensive organizational assessment consisting of over 80 questions to examine: 1) Program Delivery, 2) Built Environment, 3) Collaboration, Outreach & Referral, and 4) Staff & Organizational Competence All EQTY partners completed 2 full days of in person training and received onsite support to complete organizational assessments On March 4, 2015 King County councilmember Joe McDermott introduced a motion expressing support for Project EQTY in its efforts to ensure parity of access to support for homeless LGBTQ youth and youth of color in King County The King County Comprehensive Plan to End Youth and Young Adult Homelessness Plan ReFresh was passed including ongoing support for Project EQTY The NW Network continues to advocate for LGBTQ homeless youth by recommending community based solutions to hate violence including our Hate Violence Information Gathering Line. We fielded a number of media requests regarding LGBTQ youth homelessness and participated in conversations with Crosscut, the Seattle Channel, the Stranger and the Capital Hill Times.
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YearOne: Project Activities
Project EQTY is a three-year capacity-building effort that will include eight training and strategy sessions, organizational and staff assessments, and technical assistance. The project uses a cohort model to simultaneously work with five agencies in King County to increase their coordination, competence, and capacity to support LGBTQ homeless youth. The five agencies participating in Project EQTY include: New Horizons, YouthCare, Friends of Youth, Auburn Youth Resources, and The Y of Greater Seattle. In the first year of Project EQTY, we conducted a series of “This process has meetings, trainings and individual site visits with all of our been eye EQTY partners. Below you will find a summary of each of opening for our the meetings. group.”
Training & Strategy Session 1 The first training and strategy session oriented project partners to the project timeline and goals and included in depth training on the culturally specific needs for LGBTQ youth. The project partners identified strengths and barriers to developing a regionwide collaborative effort serving LGBTQ homeless youth. The group collectively defined what coordinated and competent services for LGBTQ youth could look like. Additionally, the NW Network’s OutSpoken LGBTQ youth leadership team presented on their own successes and challenges in accessing services such as housing, drop-in services, and mental health supports.
Training & Strategy Session 2 During the second session, the NWN outlined best practices for collecting inclusive and representative data on LGBTQ youth. The group identified challenges and potential opportunities for following these best practices, especially regarding the use of more inclusive language on client intake forms. The session closed with project partners creating action plans to increase their organizational capacity to serve LGBTQ youth.
Year One: Evaluation Activities
In the first year of the project, the NW Network team worked extensively with an evaluation consultant to design and begin implementing the evaluation of Project EQTY. The team developed a logic model for the project and an evaluation plan that includes both process and outcome evaluation components. As part of the process evaluation, each EQTY site completed an organizational assessment. A team at each site completed the assessments collectively, answering over 80 questions related to program delivery, built environment, collaboration, outreach, referrals, and staff and organizational competence serving LGBTQ youth. As part of the outcome evaluation, 22 staff from EQTY partner agencies completed an online pre-test survey. The survey measured individual and organizational comfort and competence regarding LGBTQ issues as well as relationships among partner agencies. A similar survey will be implemented at the end of the project to assess changes over time in the project’s outcomes of interest. The following section includes some of the key things we have learned thus far using the organizational assessment and pretest data from the evaluation.
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What We’ve Learned Thus Far
Lesson 1: Including the T in LGBT In their pretests and organizational assessments, EQTY partners demonstrated important strengths when it comes to supporting lesbian, gay and bisexual youth. For example, 80% of the partners collect clients’ sexual orientation information at intake. These same strengths do not always extend to trans* youth, however. For instance, only 40% of EQTY partners collect information about clients’ trans* identities, and many reported a need for their agency to prepare staff to talk to clients about their gender identity or expression. Using data from the pretest, the figure below demonstrates the greater comfort and competence at both the individual and organizational level with serving LGB clients over trans* and gender non-conforming clients.
Figure 1. Individual and Organizational Comfort & Competence Serving LGBTQ Youth
Lesson 2: Prioritizing LGBTQ youth outreach A common theme that emerged in the evaluation data and at EQTY meetings and trainings was the need for more explicit marketing materials and outreach strategies for LGBTQ youth. Many project partners offer inclusive programs for LGBTQ youth, however most reported challenges in communicating the availability of these services to LGBTQ youth. Future phases of the project will involve working with project partners to expand their outreach efforts and increase the reach of their services to LGBTQ youth.
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Lesson 3: Addressing intersections of violence and homelessness for LGBTQ youth In the pretest we asked EQTY cohort members about their comfort, competence, and related training in talking with youth about a range of issues. Encouragingly, a majority of staff had received LGBTQ-inclusive training about homelessness, family issues, and bullying. In contrast, staff received less LGBTQ-inclusive training on the experience of many different forms of violence, including intimate partner violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, and family violence. Given the high co-occurrence of violence and homelessness, especially for LGBTQ youth, future EQTY activities will work with partner agencies to expand their capacity to address the intersection of these issues.
Lesson 4: Institutionalizing LGBTQ competence In this first year, EQTY partners identified key ways that they support LGBTQ youth. For example, on the organizational assessment, all partners reported affirming clients’ self-reported gender and sexual orientation. All agencies also described their mental health, case management, and emergency shelters as good at meeting the unique needs of LGBTQ youth. A future area for the project to focus on is institutionalizing these programmatic strengths by working with partners to create LGBTQ competent organizational policies. For example, less than half reported that their policies are analyzed for their impact on LGBTQ communities. Additionally, only 20% of agencies have organizational values that mention support of LGBTQ communities, and no agencies’ mission statements do. Developing LGBTQ competent policies will help organizations to institutionalize and sustain this commitment to serving LGBTQ youth.
Lesson 5: Building partnerships on a strong foundation of trust Developing a committed and visible cohort was essential to the success of this project. Much thought was put into pulling together the right team of youth serving organizations in our region. King County is a large geographic and socially diverse county consisting of urban, suburban, and rural communities. In assembling the cohort, we prioritized geographic diversity, ensuring a mix of organizations that work with homeless youth all over King County. The five Project EQTY cohort members include: New Horizons, YouthCare, Friends of Youth, Auburn Youth Resources, and The Y of Greater Seattle. We found that our Project EQTY cohort members are starting the project with a strong will towards collaboration. The figure below (Figure 2) comes from the pretest completed by the EQTY Team staff members representing all 5 cohort agencies. The blue arrows indicate agreement with the statement “I trust the staff at this agency to competently serve LGBTQ youth.” The thicker the arrows, the greater the level of agreement. While we found a strong foundation of collaboration the pretest data did indicate gaps in our region’s referral and collaborative networks. While some organizations regularly refer
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The data also revealed a need to continue working with our cohort partners to increase their knowledge of the services and programs at each partner agency and to increase cross-agency referrals and communication.
Figure 2. “I trust the staff at this agency to competently serve LGBTQ youth” Recruiting and negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the Project EQTY cohort was more labor intense than we initially imaged. We spent months negotiating in good faith with one potential partner. Eventually, this potential EQTY partner decided it was not able to sign the project MOU and was ultimately unable to participate in the project. While they were clearly conflicted, in the final analysis they determined that as a religiously based organization that deems same-sex affection and relationships as sinful, they could not be in formal relationship with an LGBTQ organization. This process of intentional collaboration and centering LGBTQ communities illuminated implicit bias, on-going stigmatizing practices and institutional tensions in our county’s homeless youth serving continuum. In a region with a high population of LGBTQ people, it’s common to think that the needs of LGBTQ communities will be met by sheer representation among the population. It’s a myth that by just having LGBTQ people present the needs of LGBTQ people will be inherently met. This episode is an object lesson in structural inequality. Bias against LGBTQ people is alive and well, even in liberal bastions such as King County. And, the work needed to surface and address (with compassion, discipline, loving-kindness and unwavering commitment to justice) such bias is fundamental to the changes we seek for homeless youth. By centering LGBTQ communities we were able to draw out these tensions and help our region work together to eliminate institutional bias and work towards a near future where LGBTQ people are not only tolerated as clients but met as civic equals in our expertise, authority, legitimate power and full humanity.
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Recommend -ations
Based on what we have learned thus far, below is a brief summary of current recommendations for King County as we move forward in centering the needs of LGBTQ homeless youth:
Understanding Structural Inequality and the Need for Culturally Specific Programming Meeting the needs of LGBTQ homeless youth will require services from both culturally specific by and for LGBTQ organizations and culturally competent mainstream services Structural inequality (poverty, racism, homophobia, etc.) is at the heart of homelessness and has specific implications for LGBTQ youth and youth of color. It is essential to understand how structural inequality affects supports for marginalized youth. Continue to support our region’s capacity to build programming that centers the needs of LGBTQ youth through the LGBTQ Equity Toolkit (as recommended in the King County Comprehensive Plan Re-fresh) It’s important for city, county and private funders to review not only the policies but the practices of organizations in complying with anti-discrimination ordinances not only when it comes to services provided but within hiring and business practices as well.
Modeling Strong Collaboration with Regional Partners From its inception Project EQTY has closely collaborated with the King County Comprehensive Plan to End Youth and Young Adult Homelessness1. In the spring of 2015 the NW Network voted to endorse the Comprehensive Plan Re-fresh which included specific support for Project EQTY and the development of an LGBTQ Equity Toolkit modeled after the City of Seattle’s Racial Equity Toolkit. It’s essential to further explore how our region’s youth coordinated entry system, Youth Housing Connection, is meeting the needs of LGBTQ youth. When asked every one of our Project EQTY partners expressed concern about how effectively the current youth housing assessment questions are at connecting queer and trans young people to LGBTQ appropriate housing.
Data Collection Ensure LGBTQ youth are being counted Protect youth from unintended consequences related to mass data collection and limit identifiable data collected and stored through systems such as HMIS and RHYMIS. This includes a strong ethic around informed consent and maintaining the “Opt In” practice associated with this data collection.
1
http://www.kingcounty.gov/socialservices/Housing/ServicesAndPrograms/Programs/Homeles s/HomelessYouthandYoungAdults.aspx
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Work with funders to allow more flexible and open ended Sample Intake Form answers to questions related to gender identity and Name:________________________ sexual orientation Preferred Name: _______________ All programs should continue to develop intake and paperwork procedures that: How do you identify your gender? _____________________________ o Ask open ended questions about gender identity Pronoun Preference (he, she, they, o Understand what it means for a youth to be etc.): ________________ transgender, recognizing that transgender youth will have diverse experiences and ways of talking about their self-identity o Avoid assumptions about the sexual orientation of transgender young people. Understand that a person’s sexual orientation relates to who someone is attracted to and a person’s gender identity relates to how the person understands his or her gender. o Allow transgender youth to express their gender identity through their chosen attire, hairstyle, and mannerisms while using agency services o Always refer to transgender youth using their chosen name and pronoun preferences. o Pay special attention as to not unnecessarily “out” LGBTQ youth and actively engage with young people about potential safety concerns
What’s Ahead
Over the next two years we will collectively work on issues related to organizations’ built environments, collaborations, outreach efforts, referrals, and organizational competence. We will hold six more training and strategy sessions, three per year, and provide technical support and assistance to project partners as they move forward on their action plans. As we continue to grow and learn we will disseminate yearly learnings and recommendations to the broader community.
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