Be YOU Expands to Serve More Schools this Fall
Out Youth is expanding its reach to youth in Title 1 middle schools and high schools with the help of Lead Clinician for School-based Services, Renée Randazzo, LPC-Intern (1). Thanks to a generous Opportunity Grant from the Saint David’s Foundation, Renée was hired in November to facilitate supportive counseling groups in middle schools and high schools in Central Texas, and is charged with the long-term vision of growing the program.
OutYouth is expanding its reach to more schools this fall with the help of Lead Clinician for School-based Services, Renée Randazzo, LPC-Intern (1). This continues our work providing in-school support to LGBTQ+ students thanks to a generous Opportunity Grant from the Saint David’s Foundation.
This fall, our Be YOU curriculum will be available in 10 local Title 1 middle schools and high schools. Interest was so strong at Manor High School and McCallum High School that two groups will be needed at each in order to meet the demand.
The groups we led this past Spring were vital to students at Travis High School, Eastside Memorial High School, Manor High School, Dobie Middle School, and Bertha Sadler Means Young Women’s Academy. In all, we were able to deliver campus-based supportive counseling to 40 youth, many of whom would not otherwise be able to access OutYouth’s services.
Over the summer, Renée completed our Be YOU curriculum and will be piloting it over the school year 2017-18, collecting data from participants in order to evaluate its effectiveness.
“The Be YOU curriculum has a solid foundation in the most current research on supporting LGBT youth,” Renée explained. “It is also based on Out Youth’s 27 years of experience serving the needs youth of all sexual orientations and gender identities. In many ways, writing this curriculum was like channeling the wisdom of Out Youth and turning that wisdom into a written product.”
With a total of 12 groups planned, the coming school year promises to be a busy and fruitful one. Our goal is to end the school year with double the number of youth served in the program over the previous year, rich data collected from the pilot demonstrating youth’s improved resilience and self-advocacy, and a well-crafted and thoroughly-tested curriculum to share with the world.
(1) Renée Randazzo, LPC-Intern is supervised by Sara Weber, LPC-S
Transgender Wellness, a new service of Out Youth
In March, Texas Health Action's KIND Clinic opened a free transgender care clinic, the first of its kind in Central Texas. Through a new program called Transgender Wellness, Out Youth is piloting an array of holistic services in partnership with the KIND Clinic to promote the wellbeing of transgender Texans.
In March, Texas Health Action's KIND Clinic opened a free transgender care clinic, the first of its kind in Central Texas. Through a new program called Transgender Wellness, Out Youth is piloting an array of holistic services in partnership with the KIND Clinic to promote the wellbeing of transgender Texans.
Texas Health Action's medical director Dr. Cynthia Brinson hopes the clinic will be “a place where people who are seeking help for gender issues can feel at home.” At the Kind Clinic, transgender adults receive gender-affirming care such as feminizing hormones, masculinizing hormones, STD screenings, and HIV treatment and prevention drugs.
In addition to receiving medical care, patients of the Kind Clinic can access Transgender Wellness, a program of Out Youth, to meet more of their needs. Transgender Wellness provides a weekly support group, individual counseling services, and case management including help with the process of name and gender marker changes.
“Not everybody who goes to the Kind Clinic for gender-affirming care will have a need for these services,” explains Out Youth’s Clinical Director Sarah Kapostasy. “But for those who do, we are pleased to be able to help. Navigating the journey of gender affirmation can be difficult and stressful. Transgender Wellness supports people in both the logistical and the emotional aspects of this journeys.”
At launch, Transgender Wellness saw immediate success. Attendance at the weekly Gender Affirmation support group is strong and consistent, with members expressing gratitude for the opportunity to meet others and share their stories in a supportive space. Appointments for individual counseling and case management services also began filling up right away. As Out Youth supports the mental health and wellness of transgender and gender non-binary people, we will collect data showing of benefits of these services to pursue additionally opportunities to fund Transgender Wellness beyond the pilot period.
The need for free transgender wellness services in Austin is indisputable, and Out Youth is pleased to partner with the Kind Clinic to be able to offer them.
Be YOU Curriculum Supports Students in Schools Across Central Texas
Out Youth is expanding its reach to youth in Title 1 middle schools and high schools with the help of Lead Clinician for School-based Services, Renée Randazzo, LPC-Intern (1). Thanks to a generous Opportunity Grant from the Saint David’s Foundation, Renée was hired in November to facilitate supportive counseling groups in middle schools and high schools in Central Texas, and is charged with the long-term vision of growing the program.
OutYouth is expanding its reach to youth in Title 1 middle schools and high schools with the help of Lead Clinician for School-based Services, Renée Randazzo, LPC-Intern (1). Thanks to a generous Opportunity Grant from the Saint David’s Foundation, Renée was hired in November to facilitate supportive counseling groups in middle schools and high schools in Central Texas, and is charged with the long-term vision of growing the program.
Renée is an LGBTQ-affirming psychotherapist who has experience working with adolescents and teens in school settings. Before arriving in Austin during the summer of 2016, she worked for one of the nation's leading organizations in LGBT healthcare, Fenway Health, as the Transgender Health Patient Advocate and Community Liaison. Renée also worked as a school-based clinician for the Boston Institute for Psychotherapy, conducting individual and group counseling in Boston Public Schools. She completed clinical internships at the MassArt Counseling and Wellness Center and Boston GLASS (Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services).
At OutYouth, Renée hit the ground running, facilitating existing groups at Travis High School, Eastside Memorial High School, Manor High School, Dobie Middle School, and Bertha Sadler Means Young Women’s Academy. She also brought on a new campus for the spring semester of 2017, Del Valle High School. Alongside Clinical Director Sarah Kapostasy, LPC, and two graduate student interns, Renée delivered campus-based supportive counseling to 40 youth, many of whom would not otherwise be able to access OutYouth’s services.
In addition to providing direct services, Renée has drafted a formal curriculum for supporting the social emotional wellbeing of middle school and high school students who are vulnerable to minority stress. The curriculum is entitled “Be YOU: Young, Outspoken, Unbreakable” and combines best practices in LGBT-affirming counseling with developmentally appropriate techniques to maximize cohesion in youth groups.
“The Be YOU curriculum has a solid foundation in the most current research on supporting LGBT youth,” Renée explained. “It is also based on Out Youth’s 27 years of experience serving the needs youth of all sexual orientations and gender identities. In many ways, writing this curriculum was like channeling the wisdom of Out Youth and turning that wisdom into a written product.”
Pending approval from the Austin, Manor, and Del Valle School Districts, OutYouth plans to pilot the Be YOU curriculum through its school based services program over the school year 2017-18, collecting data from participants in order to evaluate its effectiveness. The reach of the program will expand from six campuses to ten, with the launch of groups at Webb Middle School, Mendez Middle School, McCallum High School, and Liberal Arts and Science Academy. Interest in the Be YOU groups is so strong at Manor High School and McCallum High School that two groups will be needed at each in order to meet the demand.
With a total of 12 groups planned, the coming school year promises to be a busy and fruitful one. Our goal is to end the school year with double the number of youth served in the program over the previous year, rich data collected from the pilot demonstrating youth’s improved resilience and self-advocacy, and a well-crafted and thoroughly-tested curriculum to share with the world.
(1) Renée Randazzo, LPC-Intern is supervised by Sara Weber, LPC-S
Announcing New Out Youth Press
About a year ago Out Youth established its very own in-house publishing program at our youth drop-in center called Out Youth Press. Using available resources available -- paper, markers and our youth’s ideas – we have created a number of wonderful small books and magazines.
Some of our recent projects have included:
- A zine (a short magazine) about HIV stigma;
- “Identity Comics” (i.e. comic strips about different aspects of a person’s identities); and “A Beginner’s Guide to _______,” which is our latest project. It’s a series of small books about topics our youth know a lot about like gender identity, sexual identity, and self-care.
These books will be featured alongside other resources offered in the drop-in center for anyone to read. This fall we will be anthologizing some of the projects our youth have created. This anthology will feature poetry, photography, illustration, essays, collage, and even some recipes.
This project encourages and nurtures the creativity and insightfulness inherent to our youth. We hope to continue to use this program in order raise the voices of LGBTQ+ youth, emphasize the importance of telling your own story and empower our youth to believe in the strength of their own ideas.