Listening Session with LGBTQIA+ Individuals and Service Providers Living/Working in Georgia Urban and Rural Communities

Listening Session Semi-Structured Instruments

Instrument 1 – LGBTQIA+ Community Member Semi-Structured Listening Session Instrument

Intro: Thank you for attending today’s listening session. We expect this focus group to take 1.5 hours and we look forward to hearing your feedback. The overall goal of our listening to gain insight to inform ACF’s Rural Engagement Strategy regarding:

1. How living in Georgia’s urban, suburban, and rural communities:

• vary and affect how LGBTQIA+ clients experience dealing with or possibly dealing with human service providers.

• potentially influence family dynamics for LGBTQIA+ individuals seeking or in need of resources or service

• affect decisions about being a service provider (or potential service provider) for LGBTQIA+ individuals.

2. Best practices that ACF should employ when communicating with and positively involving LGBTQIA+ individuals and service providers.

3. Properly identifying in order to properly serve LGBTQIA+ persons who are in need of service without result in delay (or denial of service) and, how?

Your participation is voluntary, and you may skip questions you do not want to answer. However, we greatly appreciate you sharing your experiences to inform our efforts to develop strategies and services to better meet your needs. The purpose of this focus group is to learn about your lived experiences. We will keep all information here shared private. We ask that you do not share information outside of this conversation.

Findings will be reported in a qualitative summary on the listening sessions, which ACF will publicly publish, and in a presentation for internal use by ACF program offices and managers. ACF intends to use the information to inform approaches to providing grants, services, and technical assistance to meet the needs of rural communities and to increase LGBTQIA+ involvement in ACF programs.

Please note that a Federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and no individual or entity is required to respond to, nor shall an individual or entity be subject to a penalty for failure to comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number. The OMB number for this collection is 0970-0630 and the expiration date is March 31, 2027.

If you have questions or comments on this data collection, please contact Jacqueline Mull by email at jacqueline.mull@acf.hhs.gov.

1. Introductions. Staff introduce themselves with name, pronouns, title, and where you are from. Then ask participants: Please tell us your name, your pronouns, where you are from, how long you have lived in Atlanta, and if you wish, your age.

2. Can you describe some of your experiences as an LBGTQIA+ person living in a rural community (formerly or currently)?

3. What resources are in place in your community that you feel support you? If you have lived in both rural and urban – or suburban – settings, is there a difference in the resources that have been available to you?

4. Have you ever sought support or services from community organizations or government agencies? If so, do you feel that you were treated differently than non-LGBTQIA+ service recipients because of your sexual orientation or gender identity or expression?

5. Tell me about a time when you sought support, services or resources but didn’t seek it. Why did you decide not to seek help?

6. How do your relationships with other people including family, friends, and others help or hinder you in reaching your goals?

7. What specific challenges do you feel LGBTQIA+ youth face in your community? What helps you to be resilient and overcome these challenges?

8. How do you find information that you need? Who are the trusted people that you speak with in your community?

9. Regarding how you think community organizations and government agencies can better support LBGTQIA+ young people living in rural communities.

• How can existing services be improved to better support LGBTQIA+ youth?

• What services do you need that aren’t currently available?

• To improve outreach to better reach and engage LBGTQIA+ community youth, what are your recommendations and, if you have experience living in a rural area, would that change the outreach strategies you recommend?

10. Is there anything else you would like to share to help us improve services to and outcomes for LGBTQIA+ youth?

Instrument 2 – LGBTQIA+ Service Providers Semi-Structured Listening Session Instrument

Intro: Thank you for attending today’s listening session. We expect this focus group to take 1.5 hours and we look forward to hearing your feedback. The overall goal of our listening sessions is to learn more about how providing services in rural or surrounding communities impacts those you serve, and, your service design and delivery. Your participation is voluntary, and you may skip questions you do not want to answer. However, we greatly appreciate you sharing your experiences to inform our efforts to develop strategies to better support your work. The purpose of this focus group is to learn about the experiences of organizations providing services to the LBGTQIA+ community. There will an audio recording to create a transcript and analyze the information that you share. We will keep all information here shared private. We ask that you do not share information outside of this conversation.

Findings will be reported in a qualitative summary on the listening sessions, which ACF will publicly publish, and in a presentation for internal use by ACF program offices and managers. ACF intends to use the information to inform approaches to providing grants, services, and technical assistance to meet the needs of rural communities and to increase LGBTQIA+ involvement in ACF programs.

Please note that a Federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and no individual or entity is required to respond to, nor shall an individual or entity be subject to a penalty for failure to comply with a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, unless that collection of information displays a currently valid OMB Control Number. The OMB number for this collection is 0970-0630 and the expiration date is March 31, 2027.

If you have questions or comments on this data collection, please contact Jaqueline Mull by email at Jacqueline.mull@acf.hhs.gov

1. We have four questions about services your organization provides to LGBTQIA+ individuals living in rural communities:

1. Do you have specific services and supports you provide to this population?

2. What are your outreach strategies to the LGBTQIA+ community?

3. How do you communicate to LGBTQIA+ individuals that they are welcome? For example, do you have safe space posters, explain that you have nondiscrimination policies, or ask voluntary questions about pronouns or sexual orientation or gender identity on intake forms?

4. Do you think your LGBTQIA+ clients have equitable outcomes in your services, ie. similar results to your non-LGBTQIA+ clients? Do you track outcomes by sexual orientation and gender identity so you can measure this?

2. We now have several questions about working with LGBTQIA+ Clients:

1. What specific assets do LGBTQIA+ clients bring to your organization? How are members of this community resilient?

2. Have you carried out listening sessions or surveys of LGBTQIA+ lived experience leaders to learn about their specific needs and how well your services are meeting their needs? If so, what have you learned?

3. What specific needs, challenges and barriers do LGBTQIA+ clients face in your services?

4. Do you feel you are able to meet the specific needs of these clients?

5. What approaches and supports have been particularly effective in meeting your LGBTQIA+ clients’ needs?

3. What challenges, internal or external to your organization, make it more difficult to serve this population (if any)?

4. What additional resources, training, or other supports do you feel you would need to better meet the specific needs of these clients?

5. What policy changes or flexibilities would help you improve your service delivery to the LGBTQIA+ community?

6. We now have several questions about the grants process.

   1. Tell me about your experiences as an organization in terms of identifying, applying for, and implementing federal grants that provide services to rural communities.

   2. How can the grant process be improved to better meet the needs and challenges of your organization as it works to serve members of the LGBTQIA+ community?

   3. How can the grants targeting the LGBTQIA+ community be improved to help your organization meet the needs of LGBTQIA+ community members you serve?

7. Is there anything else that you would like to share?

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