Welcome! We are so glad you are here and ready to improve the quality of your SOGI data. The purpose of this guide is to help your community diagnose the issues in your SOGI data and uncover new ideas to test. Ultimately, improving data collection and completeness to reach a 70-90% threshold.
This guide will also help you answer BNL Scorecard questions:
13) On a month by month basis, does your community have demographic data for at least 70-90% of the young people on your By-name list?
14) Are all your homeless service providers (for all populations) universally collecting sexual orientation data?
DIAGNOSE THE STATUS OF YOUR COMMUNITY’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION DATA QUALITY
Start here:
Engage LGBTQ+ young people with lived experience in your community through the local YAB or LGBTQ+ drop in center to understand what the biggest areas for improvement are in your community.
Pair these findings with your BNL analysis to identify the best place to start your SOGI data improvement work.
BNL Data Dive:
Pull your BNL report and filter by demographics and by project and agency to assess which organization(s) and project(s) have the highest percentages of unknowns and client refused
Identify between different unknown categories to ensure that you are differentiating between client refused and unknown.
This list should be assessed monthly to track improvement / barriers or increases of Unknowns.
Initial Community/Provider Assessment:
Take a whole community approach by using the LGBTQ+/POC Inclusion Tool
This self-assessment tool can be completed by youth providers in your community. It includes best practices and indicators of inclusive spaces, policies, programming, paperwork, and training practices. This exercise can generate lots of new ideas for improvements to existing services and programs!
FIND & TEST SOLUTIONS
UNIVERSAL SEXUAL ORIENTATION DATA COLLECTION
Problem: Providers across a community are not universally required to collect sexual orientation data for clients across all ages.
Clarifying questions:
Understand the barriers at different levels of homeless systems e.g. street outreach vs. CoC Leadership: are they philosophical or logistical? Or both?
Who is the decision maker? Is it the provider? The HMIS administrator? Or the CoC?
Deep dive activity:
Do a stocktake of projects that collect sexual orientation and ones that don’t. Learn the mechanism by which the data is collected in HMIS and get the HMIS team to ensure that the sexual orientation question is on intake forms.
For projects that aren’t currently collecting sexual orientation data:
Meet with leadership to identify reasons or barriers for not collecting SO data. Use the Barrier Brainstorm Chart to identify improvement ideas to switch the agency norm to collecting SO data.
Add SO data questions to existing intake forms. This data collection doesn’t necessarily need to match HMIS (eg. if you are using expanded SOGI categories beyond HUD’s) but needs to be clear enough for a provider to enter the data in HMIS correctly. Note: some systems allow you to print a blank assessment form that you can use.
Share out a 1 pager/flyer that explains what SOGI data is, the importance of it, and ways to ask and collect data in a safe and open way to ensure the young person feels comfortable in that setting. All the info you need is in this resource!
Facilitated Exercise for Outreach Teams:
Meet with Outreach Teams to determine how they are or if they are currently collecting data. Then discuss options and opportunities to improve their collection process. Guiding questions:
What current data is the outreach team collecting?
How are they collecting data?
Who enters the data into HMIS for the outreach team? Is it done by each case manager or by one data person?
What would the outreach team need to start collecting SOGI data in the field?
HMIS BARRIERS
Problem: providers don't have the infrastructure/means to collect sexual orientation data in HMIS
Clarifying questions:
Who holds the decision making power for this in your community? How can they be influenced? Usually the CoC will need to vote in favor of system wide changes.
What is the HMIS trigger for collecting sexual orientation data in a community? How can we make sure it is a part of intake?
Balance of State Community Process:
BoS communities need to request the infrastructure to collect Sexual Orientation Data for non-OHY funded projects. This is the process you community needs to take:
Identify which projects in HMIS are not collecting Sexual Orientation Data
Provide this list to your community’s HMIS Manager at Commerce
Request that Sexual Orientation Assessments be included in these projects at a program enrollment level
Currently, Commerce can include SO assessments at the client profile screen at program enrollment. This means providers need to be trained on how to:
Collect SO data from young people
Input SO data in the Sexual Orientation Assessment
Pull in a supplemental looker report with SO assessment data in addition to the Commerce By-Name List looker report
Combine these reports to obtain a full view of Sexual Orientation Data
If you need help with this process, reach out to your local HMIS administrator and/or data coach to support you!
Facilitated Exercise to help you succeed at a CoC or community meeting:
CoC Meeting goal: persuade the CoC to vote on universal sexual orientation data collection AND/OR to get individual providers to be willing to change their own internal policies to support sexual orientation data collection.
Meeting prep: bring advocates, youth providers and young people with lived experience together to
identify compelling reasons why collecting SOGI data across your whole community is important. See the “Comfort levels” section of this guide for a list of starting point examples.
build your relationships to ensure you have allies in the room who will speak up.
identify potential barriers that will be raised within the community meeting. Do you expect them to be logistical or philosophical? Or both? Use the below Barrier Brainstorm Chart to summarize and collect the groups’ thoughts.
Barrier Brainstorm Chart to summarize and collect the groups’ thoughts.
During the meeting:
Share examples and provide solutions to potential barriers (you prepared this by completing the Barrier Brainstorm Chart)
If your community is very hesitant and resistant to large scale change - start small with a couple of youth providers and work your way towards universal collection by all providers.
If you can’t get the CoC to agree to universal collection, try to persuade as many leaders of individual agencies as possible to change their internal policies to support sexual orientation data collection. Note: this could take a few meetings, plan to have someone attend multiple meetings to help push the importance.
DATA CATEGORIZATION
Problem: Young people’s identities are not accurately represented in HMIS sexual orientation or gender identity categories
Updated HUD Data Standards for Gender Identity:
Are you aware of and implementing the new data standards? HUD’s 2022 Data Standards include more comprehensive gender identity. See more information on the changes here. Ensure that all community providers and outreach workers are familiar with the updates
You are now able to select multiple Gender Identities. Before you could only select one and there were fewer options. Now there is “A gender that is not singularly “female” or “male””, transgender, and questioning.
Young people who select multiple gender identities will be grouped into the ACI’s trans/non-binary gender category.
Young people who select singularly male or female will be grouped into the ACI’s cisgender category.
It should be noted that trans young people can select male or female, and choose not to select Transgender. If this is the case, there will be no way to identify if this young person is trans.
Chart of the 2022 HUD Sexual Orientation Changes. You can see before there were only 4 options to select and could only select one option. In 2022, the changes were made to 6 options with the ability to select more than one.
Unfortunately the HUD categories for sexual orientation are still limited and may not reflect a young person’s identity. You could try the following, to test collecting more expansive sexual orientation data categories:
You could add more expansive SOGI data categories to intake forms for certain projects (eg. CDF already uses more expansive SOGI data categories). Depending on your HMIS setup you could enter the young person’s custom SOGI data in the type-in “other” field in HMIS. See here for Pierce and Spokane’s CDF intake forms.
Fun fact: all of the custom sexual orientation categories have been used more than once by young people accessing the CDF! See the dashboard here.
DE-MYSTIFYING THE DATA
Problem: Providers and/or young people do not understand what the sexual orientation and gender identity categories mean
Creative ways to increase understanding:
Print out the gender unicorn or genderbread person and give them to providers to keep at their desks. Also provide street outreach staff to keep on their person.
Save these downloadable SOGI definition images to your phone and favorite them so that you can text it to young people or show them easily on your phone. SO GI
Other important considerations:
How are you onboarding and training your staff? Training is great but it has to be an ongoing process. Furthermore, it would be great if LGBTQ+ and Queer, Trans, Black and Indigenous People of Color (QTBIPOC) were a significant part of your staff already! The LGBTQ+/POC Inclusion Tool can also help in creating and sustaining an inclusive and affirming environment for staff and young people alike.
Are you aware of the existing LGBTQ+ organizations and experts in your area? Do a landscape scan to understand what local LGBTQ+ experts and organizations already exist in your community. Build relationships with these folks rather than re-creating the wheel. You could even create platforms for LGBTQ+ YYA (and other local experts!) to speak to their experience + the importance of having their identities seen and supported. This could be a good use of your ACI youth stipend funds.
Free SOGI education/training resources:
https://truecolorsunited.org/our-work/training-education/network/- this training will cover oppression, facts about LGBTQ youth homelessness, gender pronouns, unique experiences of transgender youth, and creating inclusive environments. This can be helpful for new staff or staff that could use further training in creative and safe conversations.
https://ccyj.org/our-work/supporting-lgbtq-youth/maps/- this is a great space for resources and learning material focused on YYA and LGBTQ+ community. Materials can be shared in case of conferencing meetings for clients that may be in need of specific resources . Also this is a great link for outreach teams to have on hand to help direct YYA to resources.
https://thesafezoneproject.com/learn/- this has a lot of resources and training focused on gender and sexuality. This is another great resource for new staff or staff that is unsure or unfamiliar with the LGBTQ+ community. Understanding gender and sexuality is the first step in making a safe space for YYA.
https://www.learningforjustice.org/topics/gender-sexual-identity- Learning for Justice offers many kinds of ongoing learning and supports.
TACKLING DIS/COMFORT LEVELS
Problem: Providers feel uncomfortable asking young people their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
Reframing the problem:
Knowing someone’s identity (i.e. pronouns) is important for basic respect and building rapport
People need the knowledge + comfort to not be afraid to get to know their queer clients, and the intricacies of their identities!
Respecting pronouns is suicide prevention!
Could we move towards thinking about these conversations in a similar way to diversion first conversations?? As in, naturally and something that is simply just done!
Take your communities’ energy around ending disproportionality and racism and keep that energy for addressing disproportionality for LGBTQ folks. Many BIPOC young people are also LGBTQ+ too!
Facilitated Exercise:
Create a group exercise with multiple agencies or within your own agency to have role playing conversations to get “comfortable” with asking questions about SOGI. Here is one example of a role playing script that you can use to train your staff to have these conversations.
IMPORTANCE OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION DATA COLLECTION
Problem: Providers don’t understand the importance of collecting sexual orientation data or how it is used.
Reframing the problem:
Think about what providers get from creating a safe space and collecting the data? What do they lose by not doing so?
Collecting data is the first step to address disproportionality!
Facilitated Exercise for your Improvement Team: Getting to the Why
Goal of the Exercise: Identify a list of reasons why your community believes it is important to have quality SOGI data. This list can be a great set of talking points for everyone on your Core Improvement Team to then share with their staff.
In order to convince your broader community that collecting quality SOGI data is important, you will need to be able to answer this question confidently! Try facilitating this simple exercise in a Improvement Team meeting:
Bring together your Core Improvement Team either virtually or in person
Gage the knowledge level of the group. You may want to set some context by talking through the differences between sexual orientation and gender identity and what your community collects in HMIS before launching into the facilitated conversation.
Here are some question prompts you can ask the group:
Why is collecting [quality] sexual orientation and gender identity important?
What will our community use sexual orientation and gender identity for?
Why do we collect sexual orientation and gender identity data?
If facilitating this conversation virtually, you could create a blank Google document and give people time to type their thoughts into the document.
If facilitating this conversation in person, you could provide sticky notes and markers and give people quiet time to write their answers on sticky notes. You can then organize the sticky notes into themes.
Voila! After completing this exercise you will have a convincing list of reasons why collecting this data is so important for your community. These reasons will guide your community throughout your data improvement journey.