PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Galloway, Advocacy Manager at The Ali Forney Center
1:45:44
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134 sec
Galloway, the Advocacy Manager at The Ali Forney Center, testified in support of Intro 56 of 2024, focusing on the proposed youth experience survey for LGBTQ+ youth in the foster care system. They emphasized the importance of giving LGBTQ+ youth a voice and the need for thoughtful survey development.
- Highlighted the crucial need for LGBTQ+ youth to share their experiences openly and transparently
- Discussed the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ youth in the foster care system, including non-affirming ACS workers
- Provided recommendations for creating an effective survey, including careful terminology selection and youth involvement in development
Galloway
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Good afternoon.
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Chair Stevens, and thank you counselor, Williams.
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And Lewis, for being here today and holding today's hearing.
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My name is Galloway.
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I'm the advocacy manager at the Ale forney Center and wanna echo the things shared today by Nadia and Aaron.
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Today, I wanna speak to the support of intro 2477, particularly regarding the proposed youth experience survey.
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At the LA porting center, we understand firsthand how crucial it is to understand the LGBTQ plus young people having a voice in the space of their experiences and being able to openly share that.
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A survey provides an opportunity for them to share their grievances with transparency and accountability.
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However, the success of a survey hinges on the thoughtful development of that.
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And when a young person comes to us who has involvement with the child, care assist system, the foster care system, sorry, particularly, they share with us their experiences they've had with ACS workers not being affirming.
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And we see this far too often when those workers are not affirming, there's a use, gender, and sexual identities.
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At AFC, we are hearing these stories after an intake of an eighteen, nineteen year old who has voluntarily left the system due to homophobia and transphobia they've experienced by not feeling heard and not being taken the actions to protect themselves by those workers.
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What these youth are describing is a form of abuse, and the least we can do is give them multiple ways to speak to their experience.
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There are numerous considerations when creating a survey on sexual orientation and gender identity, terminology needs to be carefully chosen to ensure that these participants fully understand it, and we consider the inclusion of multiple options, things like making sure there's an option to write in and that they get to choose how they speak about their identity.
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These are essential in capturing the diverse ways in which youth experience and speak about their experiences.
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We also believe that the survey to be successful must be developed by youth themselves and practitioners with experience of running inclusive accessible surveys.
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This one sure that the survey captures data and also relevant to their experiences.
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Lastly, just wanna thank ACS for working alongside us in collaboration and sticking around today for today's hearing.
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Feel better.
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Sheriff Stevens, baming you healing support.
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Thank you.
