Comprehensive Services Model

With the Comprehensive Services Model, LGBTQ-affirming drop-in centers serve as a one-stop shop. Using a strengths-based case management model, youth at the drop-in center have access to a comprehensive array of LGBTQ-affirming services within the center. Some of the service providers available include Medicaid enrollment specialists, physicians, and attorneys. Staff and peers offer group skills training throughout the day.

Ferguson & Maccio, 2012

Los Angeles LGBT Center: Recognize. Intervene. Support. Empower (RISE)

RISE offers comprehensive care coordination through a Care Coordination Team (CCT). The CCT partners with families of LGBTQ youth ages 5 and older and focuses on barriers to permanency. RISE also includes an outreach and relationship-building component to support public and private agencies in working with LGBTQ youth. This component includes a three-hour LGBTQ foundation training, a three-hour social work practice with LGBTQ training for foster parents and kinship care, and organizational coaching.

Wilson et al, 2016

Our Space & beFIERCE

Our Space is a LGBTQ youth community center operated in Hayward, Calif., that serves LGBTQ youth between the ages of 14 to 24. Our Space supported the development of beFIERCE, a tool kit for providers working with LGBTQ foster care youth. beFIERCE walks providers through the needs of LGBTQ youth and how their organizations can better support the population.

beFIERCE by Stephanie Perron, 2015

Safe Havens: Closing the Gap Between Recommended Practice and Reality for Transgender and Gender-Expansive Youth in Out-of-Home Care

This new report offers the first comprehensive analysis of the troubling lack of explicit laws and policies in most states to protect transgender, gender-expansive and gender non-conforming (TGNC) youth in the child welfare, juvenile justice, and runaway and homeless youth systems (“out-of-home care systems”). The report is co-authored by Lambda Legal, Children’s Rights and the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

Lambda Legal, Children’s Rights and the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

 

Supporting the Sexual and Reproductive Health of Youth in Out-of-Home Care: A Guide for Caseworkers

This document is one of three in a compendium of sexual and reproductive health guidance and resources for child welfare jurisdictions from a national work group convened by the CSSP. The goal of this document is to provide information and resources to workers to help them effectively support youth (ages 10 to 21) on sexual and reproductive health issues. The other two documents in this series include a policy and practice framework for child welfare leaders and policy makers and practical guidance meant specifically for use by the youth themselves. Both this document and the one designed for youth are aligned with the recommendations on current best practices around sexual and reproductive health policy and practice contained in the policy framework. Includes LGBTQ+ considerations and resources.