Formative Evaluation of a New Program to Support LGBTQ Youth in Foster Care

Background and Purpose: The Recognize, Intervene, Support, Empower (RISE) project was implemented by the non-profit Los Angeles LGBT Center (The Center) under a PII grant awarded to The Center.  RISE was designed to provide LGBTQ children and youth, their parents and caregivers, and child welfare professionals with the support and education needed to nurture emotional and physical permanence with supportive adults durable lifelong connections. 

RISE includes two interventions, Outreach and Relationship Building (ORB), a training aimed at increasing LGBTQ knowledge and competency among child welfare professionals, and Care Coordination Team (CCT) services, which directly served LGBTQ children and youth and their families. The formative evaluation of ORB training and CCT service delivery examined whether each was implemented as planned, and produced expected proximal outcomes.

Methods: The ORB formative evaluation used a pre- and post-test to assess gains in the basic knowledge among child welfare professionals needed to work well with LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming youth. A follow-up survey assessed the application of knowledge. The ORB measurement instruments were created, tested for reliability and validity, and refined as part of PII.

The CCT formative evaluation used a mixed-method, pre- and post-test design to examine connections with family and supportive adults, comfort with discussing and disclosing sexuality and gender identity information, enhanced family support and less rejection, and integration into the LGBTQ community. Youth, identified caregivers, and permanency resources participated in a written pre- and post-test. In addition, some youth participated in two rounds of qualitative interviews. CCT facilitators completed a survey on behalf of the youth, and RISE staff collected case-level data about potential permanent connections in the youth’s life.

Results: Overall, the child welfare professionals who participated in the ORB training and the pre- and post-test, demonstrated gains in knowledge of basic LGBTQ concepts. However, there was indication that the ORB training may not address underlying worker-bias which has a direct impact on service delivery. Overall, CCT services helped the majority of youth identify, keep, and increase connections with identified adults. The majority of youth felt CCT helped them improve how they disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and experienced increased support of their sexual orientation or gender identity from a caregiver. Most caregivers who participated in CCT showed an increase in their supportive attitudes and a decrease in their rejecting attitudes.

Conclusions and Implications: The implementation and study of RISE demonstrated that it is possible to identify and deliver services to LBGTQ youth in foster care, and train child welfare professionals and caregivers in a meaningful way. These findings pave the way for additional research, including evaluating CCT with a larger sample size in an organization where staff have participated in ORB training and using a comparison group to study both CCT and ORB.