welcome everyone to today's knowledge by the
heart Equity action lab racial equity and social justice tool this training is a component
of the transformation transfer initiative of the National Association of the State Mental Health
Program directors next slide please I would like to introduce your practitioners and facilitators
for today's knowledge bite hello my name is Natacia Moore senior consultant at the technical
assistance collaborative and with me today we have Dr LaMont Green dire
ctor of diversity Equity
inclusion also at the technical assistance collaborative let's get into what are we talking
about today let's talk about our primary objective so our objective today is to share a framework or
a tool that can better assist communities during the planning process to mitigate adverse
consequences to racially marginalized and historically disenfranchised groups before we get
into today's knowledge right I think context is really important and so as we introduce the
he
art Equity action lab also known as Hill a little framing here and so the youth demonstration
program is a U.S development of Housing and Urban Development initiative that's really designed
to reduce the number of Youth experiencing homelessness and so what you all need to know here
also is that HUD really supports selected rules suburban and urban areas around the U.S and the
development and implementation of a coordinated Community approach to preventing and ending youth
homelessness HUD
is also committed to sharing the experiences right sharing the experiences of
the youth homelessness demonstration program or project rather and communities by mobilizing
communities across the country towards the same end you know you can't give what you don't
have and so he'll utilizes a healing centered anti-racist anti-oppressive framework that is
holistic empathetic and transformative what does that mean though and so when you think about heal
heel was launched in August of 2021 in res
ponse to feedback the YHDP ground two and three communities
that Equity work is just not head work but it must connect to the heart right it must be hard work to
be truly transformative and so participants this desire for brave and restorative spaces to really
unpack and heal internalized oppression to really sit back and unpack not only their internalized
oppression but their internalized superiority and inferiority at the various intersections of
racism indigenous indivisibility anti-blac
kness cisgenderism heterosexism and other forms of
Oppression these communities Express desire for a practice lab Community to strengthen their skills
and utilizing toolkits and Frameworks that lead to tangible transformation and preventing and ending
youth homelessness and eliminating disparities when we begin to talk about hill we talk about
how might we create a more transformative space for youth homelessness demonstration programs
and their coordinated community plan utilizing a racial
equity and social justice tool and
so what folks need to know here is that the tool that we are talking about today offers a
comprehensive analysis of the elements within the YHDP coordinated community plan and so what
it does is it aims to identify and address any unintended negative impacts on young adult
individuals facing homelessness and who are also identifying as racially marginalized or
historically disenfranchised communities and so utilizing this framework as a resource
can help
YHDP communities develop impactful coordinate Community plans not only that helps
to prevent and resolve use homelessness but also avoid perpetuating institutional and systemic
racism and in any other types of Oppression so we get into the actual r e i a racial Equity
impact assessment tool and so what do you need to know about a racial Equity impact assessment
tool think about this these racial Equity impact assessments are is really a structured analysis
aimed at understanding the potent
ial effects of a proposed initiative or decision on various
racial and ethnic communities and so by helping to foresee unintended negative outcomes racial
Equity impacts assessments contribute to the evaluation of planned policies organizational
procedures programs plans and financial choices employing a racial Equity impact assessment is
instrumental right in combating and identifying and understanding the systemic racism and
discovering culturally responsive solutions for addressing persi
stent disparities so why are they
needed why are racial Equity impact assessments needed useful I want to say this these types of
tools serve as a framework to minimize eradicate and guard against racial bias think about the tool
being utilized to address ongoing and prolonged existence of significant racial disparities and
desperate outcomes in society's institutional and systemic realms and so what also what else
I want folks to get from this piece of why these types of tools are needed b
ecause there's things
that frequently manifest in subtle and unintended covert ways that continue to create an equitable
social opportunities and outcomes for communities of color and so failing to deliberately
interrogate our systems right in those traditional practices of Oppression racial Equity often
leads to both unintentional and unintentional perpetuation of racial inequality and so that
is why we emphasize the need to utilize this type of framework or this type of tool and in the
p
lanning process and you all's planning process and now I would like to without further Ado I
would like to pass this to Dr LaMont green to talk a little bit about the resource that was
created in community and it was the elements of YHDP coordinated community plan LaMont will
be talking about the governance structure the vision and Mission gate holders goals objectives
and action steps your statement of need and new project list all as it relates to interrogating
our systems and processes D
r LaMont green so as Natacia mentioned we designed this tool
for the Youth homelessness demonstration program so as they were developing their coordinated
community plan they can assess along these different elements of their coordinated community
plan and apply that racial equity and social justice lens to minimize harm to populations most
impacted and maximize benefits and so we recognize that in the planning that your community is doing
it might not be related to youth homelessness it mi
ght be on a different topic but this can
be applied to the work that you all are doing so let's look at some of these coordinated
Community plans now keep in mind this is specific to the youthfulness demonstration project
but this application is cross-functional to the very work that you all are doing so let's scroll
down please so the first element we want to look at is governance structures governance structures
are hugely important when we're planning when we're developing an initiative
or even our
mental health agency how is our mental health agency governed right do we have people with
lived experience on the governance board do we have especially those that experience the poorest
outcomes and have the greatest Health inequities like racially marginalized populations like black
brown and Indigenous folks lgbtq groups folks are living with disability and so on folks that
don't speak English is their primary language refugees immigrants and so here with the youth
homeless
ness demonstration program some of the questions that we put forth is the proposed
governance structure grounded in racial equity LGBTQ2Spirit+ equity and when we say two
Spirit+ that symbolizes for two-spirit it's the indigenous way of acknowledging people's
genders who don't fall along the gender binary disability equity and social justice principles
right so that is very critical another question is the membership of your governance
board does it have diverse representation does it Cente
r again populations most impact
it right do you have all of the stakeholders there all of the communities most impacted by the
issue they're at the table and you want to assure that communities most impacted people with lived
experience are full participants in all aspects of governance and decision making that means we
need to move away from these advisory boards right when you come to The Advisory Board
we extract people's ideas and they may get a five dollar Subway card right those days
are
over we need to share power and share decision making with people with lived experience there's
a saying that they have at just lead Washington and it's those closest to the problem are closest
to the solutions but often furthest from power and resources right so we need to flip that script and
lift up those most marginalized as our teachers and we need to remove barriers right in this age
of covet so many of our meetings are happening virtually so we need to make sure that people
have
stipends we need to remove technological barriers you know Google Chromebooks not to
do a Google commercial right but you can get them pretty cheap we can get them on sale for
125 right so how can people check out Google Chromebooks and things like that also in a part
of your governance structure sometimes we have the status quo players like maybe you know human
and Social Services law enforcement partners and some of the more traditional non-profit
providers but do we have Grassroots advo
cacy organizations at the table as well those are
some of the things that we want you to consider for governance stakeholders are we like to
use the word now partners and so you really want to have a lens on your governance board
do you have all the partners at the table who is missing from the table especially those that
are impacted by the most severe Health inequities another question you want to ask is have
Partners from different racial ethics group and historically disenfranchised gro
ups been informed
meaningfully involved with shared decision making power and authentically represented in
any of the plans that you're creating so a lot of times in our governance board our
advisory boards and this could even be a planning committee right there's so many ways that we
talk about a Continuum of Care board and as you know in government and non-profits especially in
government we're really good at creating plans but we want to make sure that whatever plan that we're
developin
g is done in partnership with communities most impacted and not in a tokenizing way and
then this last piece that's really critical are you building into your budget sustainability
to maintain this level of engagement right to provide stipends to people to remove technological
barriers when you're having in-person meetings providing food and those types of things and
somebody say oh wow that's really costly that's really expensive right but the dividends that that
pays because the solutions
that you're developing are developed by those most impacted so these
are going to be more effective we're going to lead to Greater outcomes and also it's going
to build community power so in any plan that we're doing if it's a coordinated community plan
like the youth homelessness demonstration or it's The Five-Year Plan to end homelessness or it's
our communities plan for Crisis Intervention and mental health 988 planning whatever it
is right every plan has a statement of need so when loo
king at that statement of need we
have to we have to ask ourselves which racial ethnic gender sexual identity disability and
systems involved groups of people are currently most disadvantaged and or over represented in
this issue that we're trying to plan around how are they affected differently and what
quantitative and please consider quantitative is a data piece and qualitative is the storytelling
evidence of inequality exists and what evidence is missing or needed and this is very impor
tant
that we understand the need correctly and we have to recognize that different groups due to the
history of our country and the long Legacy of structural oppression whether it's racism sexism
ableism cisgenderism that different groups sit differently in relation to power and resources
so we need to bring that intersectional analysis so that we're understanding the needs of each
population so everyone has what they need to thrive also in your statement of need does your
coordinated comm
unity plan seek to prevent and end the issue like for this one for white VP
it's around homelessness and so we need to ask ourselves Does it include targeted strategies
to reduce disparities in discrimination for Raj racially marginalized and other disenfranchised
groups with disabilities and why this is really important because we don't want to kick the can
down the road right we need to have a plan that gets to the root causes whatever this issue we're
planning around how can we more effe
ctively get to root causes and that's why racial equity and
social justice impact assessment tools like the one that we're talking about it's really to help
us apply a lens so that we're going deep enough to have to develop more transformative strategies
and of course every plan has goals objectives and action steps and some of our plans could be
so complicated we could have a whole bunch of complicated goals and what happens those plans sit
on the Shelf until the next planning period right
and so we want things to be really in plain
language and action oriented right and so when we're developing these goals these objectives
these action steps right the strategies and tactics we need to ask ourselves what adverse
impacts are unintended consequences could result from this goal what adverse impacts are unintended
consequence could result from this objective or this action step or this strategy and that's why
it's so important to have racially marginalized and historically disen
franchised people at the
table which shared decision making partner and an equal partner because they will help to lift
up they could apply that lens right because they have that lived experience it is their community
and they know what they need so they could bring that lens right sometimes in our systems we can be
guilty we have our degrees and we can become very hyper professional almost near to the degree of
arrogance right and so cultural humility is very important and we have to ask o
urselves questions
such as will these goals objectives and action steps have a positive impact on advancing racial
and social justice are there action steps that would further maximize Equitable opportunities and
impacts and then ask these questions in relation to what you're developing and see what the people
say the partners say what the community says and then lastly when it comes to goals
objectives and action steps we always have to develop success indicators our progress
benchmarks r
ight sometimes in equity and Dei work we could have such beautiful vision and mission
statements that just bring up feelings of Kumbaya and celebration right but Equity work is real
tough work and we can move the needle and have concrete strategies but we got to be accountable
we have to have accountability and those metrics and indicators will let us know if we are making
progress or not right and what types of changes we need to make and most importantly you your plan
the work that you're
doing must be co-created by our people most impacted including these
indicators in progress benchmarks and you must also ask yourself regarding the evaluation
having people with lived experience peers involved in that and noting the impacts and
having that continuous quality improvement and ask yourself how will the level diversity
and quality of ongoing stakeholder engagement be assessed right sometimes in our communities it
could be fraught with political tension especially a polarized e
nvironments and personalities and
Egos and all those things right so we need to have partnership agreements how are we checking
in in our partnership and how are we being an accountable principled relationship and then the
next element is the new project list right and so this was a particular feature of YHDP when
creating the vision and mission same thing you want to have all of your partners particularly
those most impacted and the co-development of what the vision and Mission is and you
want to be sure
that it speaks to racial equity and social justice and you also in this vision and mission statement
you want to ask what anti-racist anti-oppressive principles are shared values are reflected in
this vision and mission statement it needs to be front and center and then another element that
some of you may have in your plans you might have projects or initiatives that you want to lift up
and again you'll hear the same Mantra where the projects co-developed and co-designed by
those
most impacted you see that Mantra will the new projects or will this new initiative or strategy
reduce racial and social disparities and advanced racial social justice and what can be changed or
added regarding potential new projects to ensure positive impacts on racial equity and social
inclusion and then are the projects realistic are they adequately funded and accessible to people
with visible and invisible disabilities with mechanisms to ensure a successful implementation
and ar
e there Provisions for continuous quality improvement right and collaboration with
those most impacted and accountability to the Greater Community so we just want to share
a bit on that and again you all will receive the PDF of this tool and again it was mentioned
specifically in work with the youth home assist demonstration program but it's really applicable
across any of our planning processes so I'll turn it back over to Anastasia thank you thank you
so much LaMont and thank you all for
tuning in to today's TTI knowledge right you can find the
material we presented today alongside with the resource that LaMont presented attached to the
resources thank you so much and have a good one
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