PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Luna Floyd, Legal Fellow at Lambda Legal Defense And Education Fund, on LGBTQ+ Youth in Foster Care
1:50:13
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122 sec
Luna Floyd, a legal fellow at Lambda Legal, testified in support of two bills related to LGBTQ+ youth in foster care. She emphasized the importance of data collection, youth involvement, and implementing plans to make ACS safer for LGBTQ+ youth.
- Supported Council Member Jose's bill number 56 and Council Member Hudson's bill 2477
- Suggested improvements to the proposed bills, including adding questions about disclosure of LGBTQ+ identity and reasons for non-disclosure
- Recommended involving youth in survey development, analysis, and policy changes
- Urged the City Council to pass the bills and commit to further improvements for LGBTQ+ youth in care
Luna Floyd
1:50:13
Good afternoon.
1:50:14
My name is Luna Floyd.
1:50:15
I'm a legal fellow at Lambda Legal Defense And Education Fund.
1:50:20
And we would like to show our support for the account was consideration of council member, Jose's bill, number 56, and council member's Hudson's bill marked 2477.
1:50:34
Council member's husband Hudson's proposed bill could be improved by adding questions about whether foster parents, caseworkers, or other adults know about a young person's LGBT identity.
1:50:49
The option for anonymity allows youth who are not out to ACS or other adults to be more accurately counted.
1:50:56
If youth have not disclosed their identity to adults around them, the survey should then ask youth to identify reasons for that decision.
1:51:04
Additionally, we want to emphasize that a survey can only be the first part of the work needed to make ACS a safer place for LGBTQ youth.
1:51:13
ACS must also finalize and implement a plan to ask youth and care about their gender identity and sexual orientation directly in a respectful and culturally informed way.
1:51:25
Finally, we also wanna recommend that council member's o council member OSA's bill include language requiring ACS to involve you in the development and analysis of these surveys.
1:51:36
ACS's youth leadership council must assist in drafting surveys, analyzing results, and developing policy and practice change proposals based on that data data collected because youth are experts in their own experiences and must have a say in decisions that affect them.
1:51:52
We encourage we would also like to recommend that the city council require ACS to report on its past and current efforts around data collection.
1:52:03
We urge the city council to pass these bills and commit to making sure that this is just the first step to improve experiences and outcomes of LGBTQ youth in care.
1:52:13
Thank you for your time and attention.
