SSA - Engagement GenIC: Listening Session with LGBTQIA+ Individuals and Service Providers Living/Working in Georgia Urban and Ru

Listening Session with LGBTQIA+ Individuals and Service Providers Living/Working in Georgia Urban and Rural Communities

Administration for Children and Families Generic for Engagement Efforts

0970 – 0630

Supporting Statement Part A - Justification

July 2024

Submitted By:

Office of Regional Operations

Administration for Children and Families

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

4^th Floor, Mary E. Switzer Building

330 C Street, SW

Washington, D.C. 20201

A1. Necessity for the Data Collection

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Office of Regional Operations (ORO) proposes to collect information to better understand the lived experience of LGBTQIA+¹ in both urban and rural communities when interacting with ACF programs and services providers.

Background

Currently, ACF lacks a strategy on providing grants, services, and technical assistance to meet the needs of rural communities. ORO’s ten regional offices have been tasked with helping ACF to better understand rural communities. ACF’s other program offices will also contribute information to inform ACF’s strategy. As part of this work, ORO Region 4 will conduct two listening sessions with members of the LGBTQIA+ community in urban, rural and surrounding communities to obtain data on their lived experiences. The data will help to inform ACF’s strategy on human service delivery in rural communities and increasing LGBTQIA+ involvement in ACF programs. Including urban and surrounding communities will help illuminate contrasted circumstance due to setting. This effort is part of a broader learning initiative to better understand and address the unique concerns of rural communities.

Legal or Administrative Requirements that Necessitate the Collection

There are no legal or administrative requirements that necessitate the collection. ACF is undertaking the collection at the discretion of the agency.

A2. Purpose of Survey and Data Collection Procedures

Overview of Purpose and Use

The primary purpose of this information collection is to help fill a gap in ACF’s understanding of the lived experience of LGBTQIA+ individuals in urban, rural, and surrounding communities. This work will contribute to a broader effort by ORO’s ten regional offices and other ACF program offices that have been tasked with helping ACF to better understand rural communities to inform ACF’s strategy². A main goal of the broader learning initiative is to better understand and address the unique concerns of rural communities. For this effort, while the findings will be applied to rural communities, gathering insight from outside rural settings is intended to better illuminate contrasted circumstance and experiences due to rural/urban/sub-urban setting. The listening sessions with participant groups will help provide information on the following learning objectives:

1. How living in Georgia’s urban, suburban, and rural communities:

• vary and affect how LGBTQIA+ clients experience dealing with or possibly dealing with human service providers.

• potentially influence family dynamics for LGBTQIA+ individuals seeking or in need of resources or service

• affect decisions about being a service provider (or potential service provider) for LGBTQIA+ individuals.

2. Best practices that ACF should employ when communicating with and positively involving LGBTQIA+ individuals and service providers.

3. Properly identifying in order to properly serve LGBTQIA+ persons who are in need of service without result in delay (or denial of service) and, how?

ORO Region 4 is partnering with outside organizations to recruit participants from rural, urban and surrounding communities. Region 4 is coordinating with ACF’s Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) to recruit grantee agencies to host the listening sessions in Atlanta and rural communities.

To gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals living in rural, urban, and surrounding communities, the listening sessions will also be conducted with LGBTQIA+ service providers.

The information from the listening sessions will help to inform ACF’s strategy on human service delivery in rural communities and increasing/improving education and services to the LGBTQIA+ community. ORO Region 4 will analyze the data, identify themes, and answer the above five learning objectives. Findings will be reported in a qualitative summary on the listening sessions, which ACF will publicly publish, and in a presentation for internal use by ACF program offices and managers. ACF intends to use the information, in conjunction with information from other efforts to understand rural communities, to inform approaches to providing grants, services, and technical assistance to meet the needs of rural communities and to increase/improve LGBTQIA+ education (should we add education before involvement in other) and involvement in ACF programs.

This specific request is limited to participants from rural, urban and surrounding communities in the State of Georgia. This narrow scope will be mentioned in the qualitative summary and presentation about the listening sessions.

This proposed information collection meets the goals and uses of the ACF generic clearance for engagement efforts (0970-0630):

• Gathering information from individuals with diverse experiences and perspectives to inform ACF policies and programs.

• Informing program improvements.

• Informing program planning.

• Informing program implementation.

• Informing the development and dissemination of resources and products.

Overview of Information Collections

Information Collection Title	Respondent, Content, Purpose of Collection	Mode and Duration
Semi-structured Protocol for LGBTQIA+ Individuals	Respondents: LGBTQIA+ Individuals Content: Prompts to facilitate conversation about LGBTQIA+ individuals experiences with living in a rural or surrounding community, engaging with human services, and finding and obtaining help when needed. Purpose: Learn about lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals who live in rural communities.	Mode: In-person Duration: 1.5 hours
Semi-structured Protocol for LGBTQIA+ Service Providers	Respondents: LGBTQIA+ Service Providers Content: Prompts to facilitate conversation about working with LGBTQIA+ individuals, providing services in rural communities, and identifying policy changes to help better the design and delivery of services for LGBTQIA+ community. Purpose: Learn about the experiences of service providers who work with LGBTQIA+ individuals living in rural communities.	Mode: In-person Duration: 1.5 hours

Processes for Information Collection

ORO Region 4 will conduct up to six listening sessions with LGBTQIA+ individuals and service providers from urban, rural or surrounding communities in GA. The ACF FYSB network of grant recipients will help recruit participants and host the listening sessions.

Each listening session site will recruit 8-12 participants from the rural, urban and surrounding communities. Semi-structured instruments will be used to facilitate the 1.5 hour conversations with the participant groups.

A3. Improved Information Technology to Reduce Burden

Listening sessions will take place in-person. This will help to strengthen ACF relationships with LGBTQIA+ individuals and LGBTQIA+ providers from rural and surrounding communities. It will demonstrate that ACF values their experiences and opinions and wants to increase LGBTQIA+ education and involvement in ACF programs. It will also help to increase ACF understanding through participant responses to personal questions about parenting and living in rural and surrounding communities. With respondent permission, ACF staff will transcribe the conversations using an audio recorder.

A4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

Although ACF issued a 2023 report on human services in rural contexts, the report did not address the topics and groups or fulfill the exact purpose of these ORO listening sessions.

A5. Involvement of Small Organizations

No small businesses will be involved with this information collection.

A6. Consequences of Less Frequent Data Collection

This is a one-time data collection.

A7. Special Circumstances

There are no special circumstances for the proposed data collection efforts.

A8. Federal Register Notice and Consultation

Federal Register Notice and Comments

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulations at 5 CFR Part 1320 (60 FR 44978, August 29, 1995), ACF published a notice in the Federal Register announcing the agency’s intention to request an OMB review of this information collection request for a new umbrella generic clearance. The notice was published on December 11, 2023, (88 FR 85890), and provided a sixty-day period for public comment. ACF did not receive any comments on the first notice. A second notice was published, allowing a thirty-day period for public comment (89 FR 12352), in conjunction with submission of the request to OMB. ACF did not receive any comments on the second notice.

Consultation with Outside Experts

ORO Region 4 has engaged with outside organizations and the FYSB network of grant recipients and their networks of affiliated organizations to assist with the identification of potential participants from urban, rural, and surrounding communities in Atlanta.

A9. Tokens of Appreciation for Respondents

It is extremely important to provide those with lived experience, experts, staff, and others providing their feedback for these efforts with equitable compensation or tokens of appreciation for participation. As noted in a 2022 report by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation³ this “helps ensure a diverse population with varied views can participate.” As such, we plan to provide Honoria to respondents, as described in section A13.

A10. Privacy of Respondents

Information collected will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. Respondents will be informed of all planned uses of data, that their participation is voluntary, and that their information will be kept private to the extent permitted by law. Respondents will sign a consent form to participate in the listening sessions (see Appendix A). With respondent consent, there will be an audio recording to create a transcript and analyze the information shared.

A11. Sensitive Questions

In the semi-structured instruments, we ask personal questions regarding LGBTQIA+ individuals and how they deal with challenges and about their experiences receiving services, which participants might view as sensitive. These questions are necessary to understand the lived experience of fathers, families, and providers in rural communities. Participants do not need to respond to a question or prompt if they choose and to take a break as needed to deal with any emotional reactions.

A12. Estimation of Information Collection Burden

Burden Estimates

Each listening session will be 1.5 hours. The semi-structured protocols provide a universe of prompts from which the facilitator will choose to guide the discussion. Participants will participate in one session each. For each site, we aim to recruit 8-12 participants.

Cost Estimates

Most of the LGBTQIA+ respondents will be earning a low-income. To calculate the cost to these respondents, we used the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) job code for Food Preparation Workers [35-2021] as a proxy and wage data from May 2023, which is $15.85 per hour. To account for fringe benefits and overhead the rate was multiplied by two which is $31.70.

To calculate the cost to LGBTQIA+ service providers, we used the BLS job code for Community and Social Service Specialists, All Other [21-1099] and wage data from May 2023, which is $25.97 per hour. To account for fringe benefits and overhead the rate was multiplied by two which is $51.94. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm

Instrument	Total Number of Respondents	Total Number of Responses Per Respondent	Average Burden Hours Per Response	Total Burden Hours	Average Hourly Wage	Total Annual Cost
LGBTQIA+ individuals	48	1	1.5	72	$31.70	$2,282
LGBTQIA+ Service Providers	24	1	1.5	36	$51.94	$1,870
Total Burden and Cost Estimates:				108		$ 4,152

A13. Cost Burden to Respondents or Record Keepers

Directly engaging the communities ACF serves and including these individuals in ACF research is in line with the following priorities of the current Administration and HHS:

• Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government (EO 13985)

• Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government

• ASPE’s Methods and Emerging Strategies to Engage People with Lived Experience (2021)

• ASPE’s Recruiting Individuals with Lived Experience (2022)

Consistent with the guidance documents referenced, we propose to offer participants an honorarium for their time spent providing their expertise and experience. Specifically, we propose to offer $50 honoraria for participation in the listening sessions to ensure a diverse representation of participants from rural, urban or surrounding communities in Atlanta and rural GA.

Equitable compensation is in line with leading practices for ethical engagement of those with lived expertise and advancing equity for populations who have been historically underserved (as noted in section A1, advancing equity is a priority, as highlighted in the referenced EOs in that section). Providing equitable compensation recognizes the value of the time provided by participants, helps to remove barriers to participation, and affirms that the contributions from those with lived experience are as valuable as those from other experts.

As noted in the 2022 report by ASPE this “helps ensure a diverse population with varied views can participate.” Additionally, in an earlier report it was noted that “Providing [those with lived experience] with compensation commensurate with the rates that other experts—i.e., experts engaged based on their expertise as practitioners or researchers, rather than lived experience—receive helped recognize the valuable and unique expertise that people with lived experience lend, which promoted meaningful engagement.” The report goes on to specify that not doing so could result in “unintended consequences….when lived experience engagements have scarce resources and experts are undercompensated, which can undermine, disregard, and/or marginalize people with lived experience.”

A14. Estimate of Cost to the Federal Government

The total cost for the data collection activities under this current request will be $6,800.

A15. Change in Burden

This is for an individual information collection under the umbrella generic clearance for ACF engagement activities (0970-0630).

A16. Plan and Time Schedule for Information Collection, Tabulation and Publication

ORO Region 4 will analyze the data, identify themes, and answer the five learning objectives mentioned in A2. Findings will be reported in a qualitative summary on the listening sessions, which ACF will publicly publish and in a presentation for internal use by ACF program offices and managers. The summary and presentation will be clear that the information from these listening sessions is limited to a small number of participants from rural, urban and surrounding communities in Atlanta and rural GA. However, the data is part of a broader learning initiative to better understand rural communities and may be discussed in connection with findings from other work. We aim to develop these materials by fall 2024.

A17. Reasons Not to Display OMB Expiration Date

All instruments will display the expiration date for OMB approval.

A18. Exceptions to Certification for Paperwork Reduction Act Submissions

No exceptions are necessary for this information collection.

Attachments

Appendix A – Listening Session Consent Form

Appendix B – Listening Session Instruments

Instrument 1 – LBGTQIA+ Semi-Structured Listening Session Instrument

Instrument 2 – LGBTQIA+ Service Providers Semi-Structured Listening Session Instrument

1 LGBTQIA+ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and other sexual and gender minorities.

2 Note that any of these activities that are subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act will be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for review and approval prior to collecting information from more than 9 individuals.

3 chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/230a8fe8986f162910b9f29f6d050f35/Recruiting-Lived-Experience.pdf

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