Introduction
The grant proposal I have focused on this semester is to fund a liaison organization known as LOQuYSIF (low-quiss-if) – Liaison Organization for Queer Youth Serving Infrastructure in Florida. LOQuYSIF aims to connect existing resources in Florida – foster organizations, mental health services, academic counselors, career planners, and legal services – to serve queer youth facing homelessness at the hands of abusive parents forcing their queer children out. Often, organizations fail to meet their full potential due to lack of reach. By connecting them through a partnership structure, capacity to serve queer youth throughout Florida could be increased.
Background Information
Queer youth represent 40% of all youth experiencing homelessness in the US (Florida ACLU, 2023), while only accounting for 9.54% of youth in the US (Conron, 2020). There are nearly 10,000 queer youth experiencing homelessness in the state of Florida (Zebra Youth, 2023). Experiencing homelessness makes these youth 1.5 times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system (Florida ACLU, 2023), and results in ACEs that lead to instability in adulthood and promote the school to prison pipeline (Florida ACLU, 2023). Addressing this issue in queer youth, who are already in a vulnerable position living as members of under-represented populations, is a crucial public health concern, especially with the rapidly evolving political landscape putting their lives in more danger (A. Ruffner, personal communication, February 15, 2023). There are often resources available to serve these youth, but no way to connect every organization with capacity to every youth in need. LOQuYSIF aims to address that issue in Florida.
Trauma-Informed Principles
Three of SAMHSA’s (2014) trauma-informed principles will be utilized for this grant. The Safety will be the first priority for these youth. Peer support and mutual self-help also aligns with increasing self-efficacy and providing community for queer youth experiencing homelessness. Finally, empowerment, voice, and choice align with increasing the locus of control and also improved self-efficacy. These three trauma-informed principles are the underpinning of the programming for LOQuYSIF.
Social-Ecological Model
While the programming is designed around trauma-informed principles, LOQuYSIF will target the community and individual levels of the CDC Social Ecological Model (SEM) (CDC, 2022). The partnership building across organizations and capacity building in individuals impacts both of these levels. Further, relationships are likely to be strengthened between individuals, and LOQuYSIF is hopeful that policy change at the societal level will be an outcome, but these are not primary SEM targets for intervention. LOQuYSIF aims to improve the lives of queer youth facing homelessness by providing them with stable and safe homes that encourage them to grow as people, which hopefully results in productive adults capable of positively contributing to their own communities.
Public Health Framework
LOQuYSIF, through their unique institutional structure as a liaison organization, will likely have an impact at each level of prevention within a public health framework. There are partner organizations that have been targeted in the parental education space, which is primary prevention to educate parents and hopefully prevent them from forcing their queer children out of the home. There are partner organizations at the secondary prevention level to transition queer youth directly from unsafe homes to safe service organizations, which prevents experiencing homelessness. And finally, there are partner organizations at the tertiary prevention level that house queer youth who may already be experiencing homelessness. While the public health framework for this proposal is broad, the unique position LOQuYSIF aims to occupy is targeted with the hope of increasing queer youth serving capacity for all partner organizations through shared resources and training. It is important to note the shifting narrative away from addressing homelessness as a siloed construct and towards addressing homelessness to prevent disease and promote health and wellness for individuals, communities, and society more broadly (Mosites et al., 2022).
Outcomes & Evaluation
Primary outcomes for LOQuYSIF include reducing queer youth homelessness, increasing the number of foster homes for queer youth, reducing queer youth in the juvenile justice system because of homelessness, advocating for policy change, increasing self-efficacy for queer youth, and improving emotional regulation abilities of queer youth. Evaluation will be conducted with quantitative data collection metrics and existing evaluation tools with available reliability and validity data for measuring constructs of self-efficacy and emotional regulation. LOQuYSIF aims to promote improved self-efficacy, self-regulation, and an increased locus of control in queer youth, resulting in queer adults that positively contribute to their communities and serve as positive role models for other queer youth.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022, January). The social-ecological model: A framework for prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/about/social- ecologicalmodel.html
Conron, K. J. (2020, September). LGBT youth population in the United States. UCLA School of Law Williams Institute. https://williamsinstitute.law....ontent/uploads/LGBT- Youth-US-Pop-Sep-2020.pdf
Florida ACLU. (2023). LGBTQ youth. https://www.aclufl.org/en/lgbtq-youth
Mosites, E., Lobelo, E. E., Hughes, L., & Butler, J. C. (2022). Public health and homelessness: A framework. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 226(S3), S372-S374. https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiac353
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). SAMHSA’s concept of
trauma and guidance for a trauma-informed approach.
Zebra Youth. (2023). Our mission. https://zebrayouth.org/about/mission-impact/
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