getREAL (Recognize. Engage. Affirm. Love.)

Across our work, CSSP develops and advances solutions with a targeted focus on supporting Black, Latinx, Indigenous communities, people with diverse SOGIE, undocumented people, and other communities who have been harmed and excluded by policy. We do this through promoting policies that ensure access to supports needed in communities, so youth and families can thrive outside of the surveillance and intrusion of oppressive and harmful systems. Our approach to policy recognizes and seeks to redress how racism has shaped policy and systems—historically and through the present—to systematically disadvantage people based on their race and other intersecting identities, including gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

getREAL (Recognize. Engage. Affirm. Love.) was launched in 2012 to transform child welfare and promote the healthy development of LGBTQ+ and gender expansive children and youth. We owe all youth space to be their whole selves and to achieve this we must reimagine policies and programs in ways that center and support gender expansive and LGBTQ+ children, youth, their families, and their communities. This requires recognizing, engaging, affirming, and loving young people—in short, to getREAL. Through our partnerships with young people, communities, systems, and local and national advocates, we have evolved our work to focus not only on solutions to promote health and well-being for LGBTQ+ youth in child welfare, but also solutions that dismantle harmful systems and strengthen and build opportunities for children, youth, and their families to be supported within their communities and outside of the surveillance of the child welfare system.

We:

• Advocate for policies that undo surveillance and policing of  the current child welfare system and advance community-based healing solutions to supporting LGBTQ+ youth in their homes and communities;
• Explicitly call for changes to policies and systems structure in order to promote affirming environments and services for youth and families outside of intervening public systems;
• Partner with youth, families, communities, and systems to co-create and advance meaningful change; and
• Work to ensure the availability of resources that affirm holistic and diverse intersecting identities.

Specifically, we engage in policy and advocacy work—issuing policy reports; releasing guidance on SOGIE data collection; partnering with national organizations to inform legislative and administrative policy and its implementation; and working directly with child welfare systems, including Allegheny County, PA and California.