Empowering Families, Embracing Diversity

Supporting LGBTQIA2s+ Youth | Family Acceptance Project | NASW Social Work Talks

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

This episode of Social Work Talks, sponsored by Connect to End COVID-19, features Caitlyn Ryan, executive director of the Family Acceptance Project. Caitlyn shares her extensive experience in LGBTQ health and mental health, emphasizing the significance of family support in reducing risks and promoting well-being for LGBTQ youth. Through the Family Acceptance Project, Caitlyn and her team have developed culturally relevant educational and intervention resources that guide families to understand and support their LGBTQ children while respecting their cultural and religious beliefs. The project aims to empower families, build healthy youth futures, and cultivate advocates who foster change in their communities. Despite current challenges in LGBTQ rights, Caitlyn's work continues to provide crucial support to families in diverse settings worldwide.

Highlights

Caitlyn has dedicated over 45 years to LGBTQ health and advocacy, starting in the 1970s 🌟.
The Family Acceptance Project was created to support families with LGBTQ children by respecting cultural values 🤝.
Their research identified over 100 behaviors that affect LGBTQ youth's health, leading to strategies for family support 🧩.
The initiative includes creating resources in 11 languages to reach diverse cultural and religious groups 🌍.
Despite political backlash, the Project continues to work worldwide, offering training and resources 🏳️‍🌈.

Key Takeaways

Family Acceptance Project helps diverse families support LGBTQ children by respecting cultural traditions 🌈.
Family support reduces health risks, promoting well-being for LGBTQ youth ❤️.
Caitlyn's 45-year journey in LGBTQ health has led to groundbreaking interventions 🏆.
The project offers culturally relevant resources for family support and education 📚.
Current political challenges highlight the need for ongoing support and advocacy for LGBTQ youth 🚨.

Overview

In a touching episode of Social Work Talks, Caitlyn Ryan shares her inspiring journey that spans over four decades in the field of LGBTQ health and advocacy. Her calling began in the 1960s with the anti-poverty movement, eventually leading to pivotal roles in addressing LGBTQ health disparities. Through her efforts, she sought to bridge gaps in healthcare access and create a more inclusive society.

The Family Acceptance Project, a fruit of Caitlyn's relentless dedication, was formulated to help families learn and practice supportive behaviors towards LGBTQ youth, thereby promoting well-being and reducing risks. By recognizing family dynamics and cultural values, the project offers a unique approach to aligning traditional beliefs with modern acceptance, fostering healthy family interactions and stronger community bonds.

Today, the Project stands as a beacon in advocating for LGBTQ youth, providing crucial resources and training to families worldwide. Despite facing current political challenges and anti-LGBTQ sentiments, Caitlyn's work exhibits an unwavering commitment to education, advocacy, and empowerment, encouraging families to become allies for their children and champions for equality and acceptance.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Episode Sponsorship This chapter introduces the podcast episode and mentions sponsorship by the organization 'connect to end COVID-19'. The host, Greg Wright, welcomes Caitlyn Ryan, the Executive Director of the Family Acceptance Project, to the show.
00:30 - 01:30: Introduction of Caitlyn Ryan and the Family Acceptance Project The chapter introduces Caitlyn Ryan and the Family Acceptance Project, which focuses on educating and assisting families in supporting their LGBTQ children within the framework of their cultural and faith-based traditions. It highlights that the project is a pioneering research, education, intervention, and policy initiative aimed at diverse families.
01:30 - 03:30: Caitlyn Ryan's Background and Early Involvement in LGBTQ Health This chapter introduces Caitlyn Ryan, focusing on her background and early involvement in LGBTQ health. It highlights her extensive career in the field, marking her 45th year of work in LGBTQ health and mental health. Caitlyn had a strong calling for this work from her teenage years, initially engaging with the anti-poverty movement during the 1960s in impoverished communities. This early experience shaped her understanding of the impact of the lack of health resources, which led to her ongoing commitment to improving the health and mental health outcomes for LGBTQ individuals. The chapter sets the stage for understanding her motivations and the foundational experiences that led to the creation of the Family Acceptance Project.
03:30 - 05:00: Development of the Family Acceptance Project The chapter discusses the personal and professional journey of an individual who recognized the profound impact that lack of care and discrimination have on people’s lives. It highlights her commitment to addressing these issues as 'the most important work' she could do. Upon coming out as a young lesbian in the 1970s, she immediately engaged with organizing efforts within the early LGBTQ health movement, which today would be acknowledged as such. Her initiatives included developing and carrying out the 1979 national lesbian and gay health conference as well as establishing a national network of LGBTQ providers, reflecting a pivotal step in LGBTQ health advocacy.
05:00 - 07:00: Research and Findings on Family Behaviors and LGBTQ Youth The chapter introduces the research and findings on family behaviors and LGBTQ youth, emphasizing the historical context and challenges faced by the LGBTQ community. The narrative begins with the author's early observations of unmet healthcare needs predating the AIDS crisis.
07:00 - 09:00: Impact of Supporting and Rejecting Family Behaviors The chapter discusses the early involvement of an individual in LGBTQ health through volunteer work and organizing efforts. The focus is on developing the first AIDS organization in the South and highlights the high proportion of gay and bisexual men of color, particularly black men, affected by the AIDS epidemic. The individual's journey continued after obtaining an MSW and becoming the first director of an AIDS organization, emphasizing the impact of both supporting and rejecting familial behaviors in this context.
09:00 - 12:00: Cultural Sensitivity in Family Support Approaches In this chapter, the author discusses the challenges and importance of cultural sensitivity in family support systems, particularly in the context of the LGBTQ community in the southern United States. The narrative focuses on a time when many individuals moved to larger cities like Atlanta to live more authentically as LGBTQ individuals, often away from the prejudices of smaller towns. However, when parents and caregivers visited these cities, sometimes due to the illness of their children, they were confronted with the reality of their child's sexual orientation, often dealing with surprise and additional emotional distress. The chapter emphasizes the need for awareness and sensitivity in familial interactions and support structures, particularly in diverse cultural contexts.
12:00 - 15:00: Challenges and Successes of the Family Acceptance Project The chapter focuses on the challenges faced by the Family Acceptance Project, particularly highlighting the lack of understanding and acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals by their families. It points out that during the AIDS crisis, many families were unaware of their LGBTQ+ family members' lives and identities. The media at the time emphasized family rejection, showcasing how families would often distance themselves, showing up only to take possessions after a young person's death from AIDS. This reflects the broader societal attitude towards LGBTQ+ individuals and the critical need for projects that promote family acceptance.
15:00 - 18:00: Influence of Cultural and Religious Beliefs The chapter explores how cultural and religious beliefs shaped perceptions and imagery regarding gay and bisexual men during a time of crisis. The narrative highlights the horrific imagery associated with these groups and the resulting familial rejection. Despite the negativity, many parents and caregivers expressed a willingness to do anything to change the future if they had known the impact of their beliefs sooner. The realization emerges that there is a need for a mechanism to provide accurate information and guidance before reaching critical endpoints such as the verge of death.
18:00 - 21:00: Building a Supportive Environment and Addressing Challenges The chapter focuses on providing guidance to families and caregivers to support LGBTQ individuals. It describes the journey of developing a family support program, including conducting research and gathering necessary resources. The narrative spans many decades, culminating in a move to California 20 years later to further these efforts.
21:00 - 25:00: Global Reach of the Family Acceptance Project The chapter 'Global Reach of the Family Acceptance Project' begins with the author's move to San Francisco State University in 1999 to establish an institute focused on LGBTQ health equity and social justice. This initiative marked the beginning of a collaboration with the California Endowment, which sought to incorporate LGBTQ health into their focus. Working alongside Raphael Diaz, the author developed the Family Acceptance Project, which conducted pioneering research on the subject.
25:00 - 30:00: Current Challenges in LGBTQ Advocacy The chapter titled 'Current Challenges in LGBTQ Advocacy' discusses developing a family support model to aid diverse families in supporting their LGBTQ children. The main goal is to reduce identified health risks and promote the children's well-being. Over 100 specific behaviors of parents and caregivers in response to their LGBTQ children were identified through the research.
30:00 - 35:00: Role of Social Workers in Supporting LGBTQ Youth Research on parental behaviors indicates a split between rejecting and accepting actions towards LGBTQ youth. Rejecting behaviors, such as forcing religious activities to alter identity or preventing association with LGBTQ groups, have been linked to serious health risks in youth. The study highlights the importance of understanding how these actions significantly affect the mental and physical well-being of LGBTQ children.
35:00 - 40:30: Resources and Future Directions for the Family Acceptance Project The chapter titled 'Resources and Future Directions for the Family Acceptance Project' discusses the significant mental health risks faced by individuals due to family rejection. It highlights that such individuals have more than an eight times greater likelihood of attempting suicide, a nearly six times greater likelihood of suffering from high levels of clinical depression, and are three times more likely to use illegal drugs, thereby increasing their risk for HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Additionally, the chapter mentions the identification of over 50 family supportive measures that can mitigate these risks.
40:30 - 44:30: Conclusion and Closing Remarks The chapter discusses behaviors that safeguard against risks and promote well-being, particularly in the context of LGBTQ young people and their families. It highlights the importance of actions like standing up for children when they're mistreated and finding positive role models to offer future options. Through collaboration with LGBTQ youth and families, a participatory framework was developed, leading to the creation of the first family support model aimed at reducing risks for these young people.

Supporting LGBTQIA2s+ Youth | Family Acceptance Project | NASW Social Work Talks Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 This episode is sponsored by connect to end COVID-19. [Music] Welcome to Social Work Talks my name is Greg wright and it's my honor and it's also our pleasure to have a Caitlyn Ryan here she is executive director of the Family Acceptance Project Caitlyn hi how are you Greg it's great to be with you I'm good hope you're
00:30 - 01:00 well too thank you thank you so I want you to tell this audience exactly what is a Family Acceptance Project and what is this mission the Family Acceptance Project is the first research education intervention and policy project to help diverse families learn to support their LGBTQ children all of our work is carried out in the context of the family's cultural and faith-based traditions
01:00 - 01:30 in the context of their cultural worlds the roots of the Family Acceptance Project go way back to my early days this is actually my 45th year going into my 46th year working in LGBTQ health and mental health uh I had a calling for this work when I was a teenager I started working in the anti-poverty movement in the 1960s in impoverished communities and I saw the impact of lack of health
01:30 - 02:00 care and discrimination on people's lives and I realized this was the most important work that I could do and when I came out as a young lesbian in the 1970s I immediately became involved in as an organizer in the early LGBTQ health movement as we would call that today developing you know the 1979 national then we called it lesbian gay health conference and a national network of LGBTQ providers and in carrying out the conference and developing that network
02:00 - 02:30 I saw multiple unmet needs in our community that predated AIDS - I did the first lesbian health care survey - I was accepted into social work school after having to fight to become a social worker as an out lesbian in the 70s and I was sent to Atlanta to do my first field placement where the CDC had identified AIDS in 1980 at the same time as I arrived
02:30 - 03:00 and and I started immediately doing early work there as an organizer in uh in LGBTQ health I started as a volunteer to help develop the first aids organization in the south and I don't know that people realize that from the very beginning of the epidemic a high proportion of people with aids were gay and bisexual men of color black gay and bisexual men and part of my work as I as soon as I graduated with my MSW I became the first director of aid
03:00 - 03:30 Atlanta and part of my work involved meeting families who came from across the south to the bedsides of their dying children at that time there was a huge LGBTQ community in Atlanta hardly anybody was out and people moved to the big cities to try to integrate their lives without shaming their families and so these parents and caregivers came from small cities and towns across the south they were devastated to learn at the same time that their son was gay and bisexual
03:30 - 04:00 and was dying of aids they didn't understand why maybe they only came home once a year why they didn't know anything about their lives or anything about who they were and the media at the time was focused on family rejection on how all families were rejecting on how they swooped in when a young person died and took everything that was accumulated by a couple and left
04:00 - 04:30 the surviving member of that couple with nothing I mean the imagery about gay and bisexual men was horrific and the imagery about families was all about rejecting behaviors but I saw this incredible response from so many parents and caregivers that would have done anything to change the future if only they knew what that was but it was at the portal of death it was at the last moment and so I realized that we needed to have a way to provide accurate
04:30 - 05:00 information for families and caregivers about LGBTQ people way to help them learn to support LGBTQ family members and that started me on a many decade course of really beginning to plan for how I could develop a family support program do research get the resources that I needed and it wasn't really until 20 years later when I was recruited to move to california
05:00 - 05:30 uh in 1999 I started talking with san francisco state university about moving there to set up an institute on LGBTQ health equity and social justice and as part of that work when I moved to california the california endowment invited me to present a proposal on LGBTQ health because they wanted to add LGBTQ health to their portfolio and with Raphael Diaz I developed the Family Acceptance Project it conducted the first research on LGBTQ
05:30 - 06:00 young people and families the intent was indeed to develop that family support model that could help you know racially ethnically religiously diverse families learn to support their LGBTQ children to reduce the serious health risks you know that have been identified over many years and help promote well-being so that's what I did and that research included identifying over 100 specific behaviors that parents and caregivers engage in to respond to their LGBTQ children
06:00 - 06:30 about half of those behaviors were rejecting half were accepting it included behaviors like making your child pray or attend religious services to change their identity not letting them have an LGBTQ friend or participate in LGBTQ support groups and we showed how those rejecting behaviors contributed to serious health risks lots of those rejecting behaviors we correlated with
06:30 - 07:00 a more than eight times greater likelihood of attempted suicide or a nearly six times greater likelihood of high levels of clinical depression or more than three times as likely to use uh illegal drugs and put oneself at high risk for HIV and sexually transmitted infections and we also identified over 50 I'm just going to say we also identified over 50 family supportive
07:00 - 07:30 behaviors that help protect against risk and promote well-being and those were behaviors like standing up for your child when other people mistreated them because of who they were or finding a positive role model to give them positive options for the future and so based on those behaviors and together in a participatory framework with LGBTQ young people and families we developed not only the first family support model that help could help you know reduce these risks
07:30 - 08:00 and promote well-being and do so in the context of the family's cultural world but a whole range of family guidance and educational and assessment materials based on these behaviors that would help families learn to support their LGBTQ children and so that's what we've been doing over the past 20 years and this is actually the 20th anniversary of the Family Acceptance Project wow I was wondering
08:00 - 08:30 if you have any estimates on how many families that you've worked with at this point Caitlyn I'm sure it's been probably like hundreds of them at this point it has been hundreds and I would say that i've worked with over a thousand LGBTQ youth it's even more than that if I think about going back you know to the early days of doing this work because I did another project in faith-based communities before I started the Family Acceptance Project but the other thing I think that's really
08:30 - 09:00 been so inspiring for me is that i've worked with families across cultural and racial and religious backgrounds and what I found is you know based on our work that when information and guidance is presented to them in culturally relevant ways they can learn to support their LGBTQ children and become more supportive and decrease those rejecting behaviors and in doing so strengthen the family and what's also been so moving is that once they learn to support their LGBTQ children
09:00 - 09:30 and learn about the disinformation that's really so widespread about sexual orientation and gender identity not only do they learn how to advocate for their own children but many of them across diverse racial backgrounds also become advocates for other people's children and are helping build civil society and change communities and really change and build healthy futures
09:30 - 10:00 I was also uh wondering if the playbook changes for you based on the family so in other words is there a different strategy when you are working with a black family or an asian or a mormon one or are there a lot of commonalities going on ironically there are a lot of commonalities in those three groups that you just mentioned and the family is at the core of all of them and if we start to think in particular families of color
10:00 - 10:30 families are their first buffer against racism and discrimination it's the way that parents transmit knowledge about their racial identity and building communities and living in the world the Family Acceptance Project's basic model is the same regardless of the background of the families but we do an in-depth cultural assessment up front to learn about the cultural and religious values to learn about what the parents and caregivers know and don't know about sexual orientation
10:30 - 11:00 and gender identity to learn about their hopes and dreams for their child and we do separate assessments with the child and adolescent and the family members to really understand where each of them is coming from and so our psycho-education plan our approach is grounded in their cultural world so there may be some differences in how the family perceives sexual orientation and gender identity differences in stereotypes differences in
11:00 - 11:30 how they communicate with their child but we base all of that in their cultural world so it's very uniquely culture based and I think that's one of the reasons why we've been so successful because we hear a lot Greg about queering this or queering that and that's one of the things that's very troubling for families from traditional backgrounds they don't want to queer anything they want to have this child as they had expected them to be they're really many are troubled by
11:30 - 12:00 a queer identity that they don't understand at all because I think largely because of the misinformation and disinformation so we're approaching them working with them in the context of their cultural world which is very different than trying to queer anything and that includes their underlying cultural and religious values their family values almost every parent wants their child to be happy healthy to have a good life to keep their family together
12:00 - 12:30 and that's how we work with them there may be some specific values related to gender roles or religious values that may be different with some of these families but what we found is that most families want their child to be safe and healthy and part of the I think the power of our work is that because we've identified and measured behaviors we can show them that it's not their beliefs that are harmful it's not their values that
12:30 - 13:00 are harmful it's these behaviors that so many are engaging in because they think they're going to help their LGBTQ child to make sure that people will treat them with respect to keep their family together to help them fit in and once they realize that the beliefs that are grounded in certain kinds of misinformation and disinformation about LGBTQ people are then leading to behaviors that are putting their child at risk
13:00 - 13:30 we help them change and modify those behaviors and we can show them especially in the early stages of working with them families that believe that this is wrong we can show them that there are behaviors that they can engage in to support that LGBTQ child without having to accept an LGBTQ identity that that to them may be very wrong and those are simple behaviors that we can show them how we've measured them and what that looks like behaviors like simply talking with your LGBTQ child and
13:30 - 14:00 listening respectfully without ridiculing them or punishing them requiring that other family members treat their child with respect like all of the other children in the family because they're a member of the family because they're a child of god if it's a religious family standing up for your child when other people mistreat them because of who they are because of their LGBTQ identity or gender diversity these are things that parents and caregivers can do that we can show how they
14:00 - 14:30 reduce risk and help promote well-being but they can do that without having to agree that this is what they want this is acceptable that these are that this is an appropriate behavior and it's a way to begin to open the door once they learn that they can increase connectedness with their child and help decrease those high risk behaviors they're in [promo: Join nasw's national Connect to End COVID-19 effort - it's a CDC-funded initiative to support social workers and their
14:30 - 15:00 clients in informed vaccine decision making. NASW is collaborating with its partner the University of Texas at Austin Steve Hicks school of social work to provide national webinars, chapter trainings tools, and information that promote vaccine confidence among social workers and equip social workers to support clients in informed vaccine decision making. Visit NASW's website to learn more.] Yes so, what if a parent is of a faith that actually believes that a child
15:00 - 15:30 who is queer is automatically going to go to hell are you trying to like alter that belief or like just have them not express that in a harmful way Caitlyn I think it's more of the latter but we don't attack their beliefs and that's something that is really important for them to understand that we are there to help them learn to support their LGBTQ child and strengthen their family
15:30 - 16:00 so our approach really is to understand what are their underlying values and beliefs in terms of their family culture in terms of their religion we've worked with families from many rejecting religious backgrounds but when we ask them about their beliefs and then about their religious values it's very clear that the values are different than the beliefs and i'll give you an example many of the world's major religions condemn homosexuality
16:00 - 16:30 and increasingly many are anti-gender diversity but when you look at the underlying values of the world's major religions they're not values of hate or victimization their values of mercy compassion love and so we're helping families and their pastors very often whom we've worked with in religious leaders understand those underlying values show them how LGBTQ young people because of the way people treat them are at extremely high risk for suicidality for
16:30 - 17:00 ending up out of home for ending up in the foster care system for example which really impacts life chances across the course of their lives helping them understand their high risk and most people don't want that to happen so we can show them how to modify those rejecting behaviors and and how that actually helps decrease their child's risk and pulls their family together and part of this is it's a process young people have been thinking about their identities typically for
17:00 - 17:30 a while by the time families find out and families find out very quickly and maybe carry a lot of misinformation and also believes that this is wrong and so what we're actually doing is helping them reconcile values and beliefs some people can do that very quickly some it takes longer and part of our process includes peer support with families from their cultural and religious backgrounds who have LGBTQ children who've been on that journey and who can
17:30 - 18:00 help them understand what this really means for them and for their family and how they can in fact reconcile what seems like discordant beliefs so how does the uh Family Acceptance Project find the families that it's uh working with I mean is it a referral are like faith-based organizations reaching out to you how are you like finding that connection out there Caitlyn well we provide a
18:00 - 18:30 number of different kinds of services one is we actually do a great deal of training across the u.s and in other countries on helping diverse families learn to support their LGBTQ children and that training could be for families themselves for foster parents in the child welfare system for providers for youth and religious leaders we also early on in the work when we developed our
18:30 - 19:00 family support model we had the funding here on the west coast to provide those services directly and when that funding ended I started working with agencies across the u.s where we've been helping them implement faps family support model so my role is really as a coach in training and providing guidance and case consultation to help them build those programs and to increase family support and because we've developed a whole range of
19:00 - 19:30 different kinds of materials everything from a family support model to intervention strategies to multilingual multicultural family education materials like our healthy futures posters that are in 11 languages and cultural versions we can show many people how to use these tools in simple ways to start to modify these rejecting behaviors and increase support so we work
19:30 - 20:00 in a range of ways including building the field you know by writing about this work and publishing on our strategies and intervention framework how many other nations other than the uh us are you working in now Caitlyn I think in like china at some point correct I worked in china I worked in korea i've been working in the spanish-speaking countries for about 15 years
20:00 - 20:30 and actually about a week ago I did the opening session for an international conference it's an organization of families with LGBTQ children from 23 spanish-speaking countries so i've been working with them in those countries and have presented in a number of different countries over the years and and some of them actually went across the country and did education and training so we've been working with them to provide guidance to policy makers
20:30 - 21:00 to use our research to change repressive laws and to disseminate our Spanish-speaking materials in those different countries and and I've worked with Canada as well and I'm hoping to work with them increasingly in the future and with some of the European countries so we're in a political alarm environment now where there was a lot of progress on LGBTQ rights but now there are several states that have either enacted or are thinking about enacting anti-LGBTQ
21:00 - 21:30 laws so how has this affected the work that you're out there doing Caitlyn I think the situation now is extremely serious and in fact in all the years that I've worked in LGBTQ health and mental health I have not seen it as dire as it is now there's been a dramatic increase in distorted violent rhetoric and public violence there's been significant stress on LGBTQ children
21:30 - 22:00 youth and families especially for transgender and gender diverse children and youth and it's affected my work a lot I mean it's increased my level of stress because for me part of the tragedy is that we don't have systems in place to provide accurate information guidance and support for these diverse families with LGBTQ children and these services are especially lacking in
22:00 - 22:30 in our public systems in for low-income racially diverse young people and families for those that are involved with child welfare juvenile justice and mental health systems we don't I think really understand that we need to be providing the same kind of support across systems of care that we routinely provide for other children with special needs for our LGBTQ children and their families
22:30 - 23:00 I think historically sexual orientation and gender identity especially sexual orientation is seen as a private behavior and not something that our public systems are should be addressing and because of the information age and the dramatic changes really over the last 30 years we now see many many young people increasingly coming out in childhood not just as transgender not just observing gender diverse expression but also young children coming out as
23:00 - 23:30 gay lesbian bi whatever language they use largely because they can see positive images of themselves that they could never see before and because this these identities are much more in the public domain than they ever were before we talk about them in schools in our congregations over the dinner table in our families so young people are identifying at very early ages families are having to grapple with this but our public systems still I think carry those perceptions
23:30 - 24:00 that these are private behaviors this is something that is an issue of adulthood or older teens it's not part of childhood and what we're seeing now Greg is the stripping away of those information barriers that prevented us from seeing what normative development of child and adolescent identities looked like and we're seeing that now those are a function of childhood just like other identity development that starts in childhood it's not something that all of a
24:00 - 24:30 sudden pops up at age 21. but our systems aren't acclimated to that they're not used to seeing it they're now seeing this as something that's deviant and unfortunately the violent divisive rhetoric that's just so widespread now and spread through the media is fanning that and it's it's telling parents and caregivers when they see these issues in their children that there's something really wrong with this that they have to fix it that they have to try to change them at home with
24:30 - 25:00 you know the more than 50 rejecting behaviors that we've identified and measured and then maybe send them to some kind of a provider or religious leader to try to change them outside the home it's a dire situation because I think our systems of care have neglected these families especially families that are disadvantaged because of so many historic uh gaps in who they are and what's happened to them and how they're treated how information is disseminated uh access to
25:00 - 25:30 resources they don't have the same level of access to resources and care as families with resources and this is a very serious problem right now and I think also in uh in religiously conservative communities those young people and families lack access to accurate information and support and I think that we're going to see increased levels of risk over a considerable future wow so my final question uh for you is I was wondering if you could give social workers advice
25:30 - 26:00 on how they can help like members of the LGBTQ community especially on our youth and children I think social workers are in a unique place to make a difference uh one of the things they could start doing is using our healthy futures posters in their agencies these are 11 different cultural
26:00 - 26:30 and language versions that on a single page tell the story of family acceptance and rejection and there are three versions of these posters in these different languages plus a guidance a poster guidance that explains the research underlying them it gives more than 20 plus rejecting or accepting behaviors that we've shown contribute to health risks and health you know promote well-being on a single page you don't need a social worker or any other kind of provider
26:30 - 27:00 to interpret the poster it's there by putting it in public spaces where everyone can see it and learn about these behaviors we're immediately telling people how important families are families are the most important resource for their LGBTQ children and that could be a mentor a foster parent auntie grandma uh it's it's all different kinds of caregivers we've shown with our research how important they are but one of the things I think that
27:00 - 27:30 people don't understand is you don't have to have a whole intervention program or special staffing to be able to make a difference just by helping everyone understand that behaviors matter the behaviors impact their child's risk and well-being that's something that we can do right now and one of the things we did recently was we created a new webs but I'll start again one of the things we did recently was we created a new online resource for LGBTQ youth and families
27:30 - 28:00 diverse young people and families that is a place where youth can go on their own where parents and caregivers can go on their own and where they can go together as a family and that website includes a national searchable website with resources to increase social support to decrease mental health risks around the us and some outside the us it includes what we think is the largest list of
28:00 - 28:30 affirming culture-based resources where parents and young people can find resources to help them affirm those intersectional identities across their diverse identities organizations that may be local but have online activities and where they can talk with someone and get more information about integrating those identities it includes a really large list of diverse affirming faith-based resources and some of them like unity fellowship
28:30 - 29:00 which is an african-american congregation that's LGBTQ affirming have online worship services where if it isn't in your community you can go online and worship together as a family it includes our evidence-based resources from the Family Acceptance Project and national resources and this is something that really should be on every list of resources that all providers should be aware of and and I hope you put the link to it up next to how you're going to disseminate this interview but
29:00 - 29:30 the website is we will we will should I tell you what the website is tell you what the website is uh yes yes please and uh we'll also post that up in on our show notes up under this episode as well fantastic so the website is lgbtqfamilyacceptance.org and we developed this website with the institute for innovation and implementation at the University of Maryland that has a very large network of LGBTQ affirming
29:30 - 30:00 services and supports and a deep reach into social work practice so this is something that everybody can do right now and also they can become familiar with our work at the Family Acceptance Project they can come to the Family Acceptance Project's website familyproject.sfsu.edu learn more about some of the materials that we've developed including a publication for supporting LGBTQ young people in child welfare a publication for samsa in
30:00 - 30:30 how to create more affirming agencies and our first best practice resources for suicide prevention for LGBTQ young people that was listed in the national best practices registry for suicide prevention there are a lot of resources to open eyes they're written at a more simple
30:30 - 31:00 literacy level to engage and involve families and in different languages and I think self-education is one of the most important things we can do as social workers the beauty of being a social worker is you can practice for many many years and it's something that we can even do as volunteers in retirement and self-educating about what transgender identity means what gender diversity means what sexual orientation is like in childhood and adolescence what family support means these are things that we can learn about
31:00 - 31:30 and we can teach everyone about because the beauty of the work of the Family Acceptance Project it's not just for work it's information for life that we can use in every parts of our lives including in our communities and congregations and certainly in our cultural worlds because families really matter and that's I think the most powerful outcome of this work that really is the culmination of my work in LGBTQ health over almost five decades
31:30 - 32:00 thank you so this is Caitlyn Ryan from the Family Acceptance Project they are celebrating a 20th anniversary and I hope that you have far more than 20 years more because there's a lot of work and we're so happy that you're on the forefront out there doing it thank you [Music] you have been
32:00 - 32:30 listening to NASW Social Work Talks a production of the national association of social workers we encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members to create and maintain professional standards and to advance sound social policies you can learn more at www.socialworkers.org don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts thanks again for joining us we look forward to seeing you next episode