7/2/20, positiveexperience.org/blog
Today’s post is based on an interview with Elliott Orrin Hinkle (they/them), an alumnus of the Wyoming Foster Care System. They are an advocate for child welfare, mental health, and the LGBTQ population. Nationally they work as a consultant to the National Capacity Building Center for States at ICF International and at JBS International working on NYTD. Since 2014 they have been a trainer of Youth Thrive and recently were certified to train on Youth Thrive for Youth (click here for their TED talk at the 2019 Youth Thrive convening). They are also working on an LGBTQ+ youth project, XChange for Change, which connects youth leaders with corporate and business allies.
Can you introduce yourself and your work?
My name is Elliott Hinkle, I use they/them pronouns, and my primary job is at Portland State University as the youth/young adult coordinator on the Healthy Transitions grant, a youth mental health grant funded by SAMHSA. I also work as a consultant on youth-specific issues, where I focus on youth work: LGBTQ youth, mental health related to young people, and foster care.
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What improvements do you think could better the foster care system?
I was having a really interesting conversation yesterday about race and foster care. There was a blind study where researchers took out all the demographic data, and the amount of removals [from Black families] was the same as White folks. How do we get to a place where we’re not just having conversations about what’s going on? A lot of foster care workers are White people who aren’t having those conversations, who have a degree behind them, so they may feel they know what’s best. I think of how many committees exist around diversity, equity, and inclusion, but not an accountability structure for when someone does something harmful. If a family or youth wants to speak up, that doesn’t really exist. What do we actually do about that? When the same people who are going to hold a White person accountable are more White people, nothing’s going to happen there.
Institutional change is going to start with people who are the most impacted by this system, the most impacted by the bias in workers.
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