Executive Director Deborah Sutton: "You learn about an injustice, you want to combat it."

CASA for Riverside County: Protecting Rights of LGBTQ Youth in Care

CASA for Riverside County is becoming a leader in their community’s efforts to improve services to foster youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning. In a recent interview, Executive Director Deborah Sutton described how forging partnerships in the community led to the development of an LGBT training curriculum that is part of the CASA program training and will soon be delivered to at county-wide foster parent trainings.

It’s really hard to look at the statistics of anything and pretend that it is not happening in your county. You learn about an injustice you want to combat it, you want to provide the services that your community needs.  

That is what happened to me when I attended a workshop about LGBTQ youth and their rights at the National CASA Conference in 2009. When I heard about the amount of abuse that these kids endure while in foster care—that a lot of them end up homeless or running away because they do not feel safe in their group and foster homes—I had to do something.

I came back from the conference and started meeting with community organizations and local political leaders. I researched local statistics and learned how to talk about the problem. I’m not gay myself, and I wanted to represent the community as best I could.  

We serve an area that has a large gay population, but I was still surprised when all of our partners— the court, other service providers, our board and the department of children’s services embraced our initiative. I think that is because we approached a topic that everybody knew needed to be approached.

Our greatest achievement so far is integrating an LGBT sensitivity training into our CASA volunteer training. The training is based on the curriculum that I received from the presenter at the national conference. I localized it with statistics for our county and stories and suggestions from members of our LGBT community who had been in foster care. This LGBT training is now part of every volunteer’s training and will soon be part of the training curriculum for foster parents in Riverside County.

To learn more about CASA for Riverside County’s work, email Deborah Sutton.