#20240207 WEBINAR: Next and Best Practices for Serving BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Youth

Description

(February 2024) BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and LGBTQIA+ youth are both over-represented in systems of care and, unfortunately, face relentless bias and discrimination from the very adults tasked with their care. In order to adequately address the needs of these youth, providers must be equipped with both an intersectional lens and cultural humility to inform their conversations, interventions, services, and organizational policies. In this webinar, participants will review and practice using Multicultural Existential Helping and Healing Centered Engagement, two evidence-based frameworks that have proven effective with marginalized and minoritized youth. Through interactive activities, learn how to demonstrate empathy instead of sympathy, how to “hold space” for youth who have experienced racial and anti-LGBTQIA+ trauma, and tangible tools that empower youth to have ownership of their own healing as they transition to adulthood.

As a Black trans youth who spent most of her childhood in foster care, Nia Clark consistently struggled to find acceptance and support from the adults around her. Channeling that lived experience, she has spent over 17 years changing systems from within as a consultant, trainer, direct service provider, researcher, and LGBTQ+ youth advocate. She worked for over eight years as a direct care counselor and Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) trainer at The Home for Little Wanderers, one of the nation’s oldest youth-serving agencies. From 2015-2017 Nia was the Mentoring Coordinator at LifeWorks, the youth development and mentoring program at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where she was responsible for overseeing nearly 50 active one-to-one matches between LGBTQ+ youth and adults each year. In 2016, she was the consulting producer of the Emmy-nominated MTV documentary, TRANSFORMATION, a film featuring herself and six trans & gender diverse youth. Nia is currently the Senior Specialist of Training & Mentorship at Human Rights Campaign Foundation where she provides training and technical assistance on LGBTQ+ inclusion to child welfare systems. In this role, she also serves as lead facilitator of Next Level, a 10-week virtual course that offers skills-based education and resources to LGBTQ+ adults ages 18-30 who are navigating biased employment and financial systems. She additionally provides part-time technical assistance at Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the National Mentoring Resource Center to develop more inclusive mentoring services to queer youth and mentors across the U.S. As an expert advisory board member and external investigator for the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she assists with multiple research projects aimed at preventing substance use, intimate partner violence,  family rejection, and the commercial sexual exploitation of minoritized youth. She was also a contributing author to Oxford University’s 2022 textbook publication Social work practice with the LGBTQ community: The intersection of history, health, mental health and policy factors (2nd ed.). As an activist for Black trans women and foster youth, Nia is regularly sought after for various speaking engagements, panels, podcasts, and local & national conferences. She is also a record-breaking three-time Point Foundation Scholar and obtained her master’s degree in Social Work from Simmons University in Boston.

Watch time: 103 minutes

Eligible Certificate of Completion time: 100 minutes

This webinar will expire on February 17th, 2025