Klaine Stan Ad Infinitum.

Well, shucks.  I get asked this every so often, so I’ll answer under a cut for those who are sick of hearing about it already.

I am a case manager and outreach worker at a nonprofit agency that provides a wide range of services for folks experiencing homelessness and related issues in my area.  I work in the Teen Services department, and most of my clients are between the ages of 16 and 20.  As part of my incredibly multi-faceted job, I also run a weekly group (as do all the case managers at the Teen Center), and the group I run is called Equality Group.  It is mostly a venue for support/education for LGBTQIA homeless youth, but we also deal with other issues such as misogyny and racism.  As y’all may or may not know, Queer youth make up a very disproportionately large percentage of homeless youth in America, which is absolutely due to families being far more likely to turn their backs completely and utterly on these youth.  Queer youth are also far more vulnerable to the most dangerous aspects of living on the streets than their heterosexual and gender-conforming counterparts.  I’m incredibly lucky in that the agency I work for is not faith-based and has a low-barrier service philosophy.  What that means is that we can do many of the things that faith-based agencies won’t do (like provide free condoms in our drop-in center, employ full-time counselors, one of which specializes in working with trans folk, and work with youth that are actively using hard drugs as long as they don’t use or deal out of our space).  We also, for the most part, allow youth to choose who they would like as a case manager and to change their case manager for an appropriate reason at any time.  And I (surprise, surprise!) seem to always end up with the vast majority of our sizeable LGBT population on my case load. I could really go into the nuances of my job, but it really is a pretty complex and unique position, and I could seriously go on for pages.  I’m always happy to answer more questions about it if you’re curious, though.