Little City recognized for supporting LGBT community

Human Rights Campaign presented its All Children-All Families Seal of Recognition to Little City Submitted by Little City

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) recognized Little City Foundation as the first and only foster care and adoption agency in Illinois to obtain cultural competence in serving the LGBT community. Bryan Samuels, commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services congratulated Little City while HRC Family Project Director Ellen Kahn presented the All Children-All Families Seal to Little City on May 23.

“We are very grateful to receive this recognition from HRC,” said Little City Executive Director Shawn E. Jeffers. “Our primary focus is the children. Regardless of individual’s gender, race, religion, creed or sexual preference, we want to find the very best homes and loving families for our children.”

As the largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, HRC represents a force of more than one million members and supporters nationwide. HRC’s All Children-All Families initiative seeks to enhance LGBT cultural competence among child welfare professionals and educate the LGBT community about opportunities to become foster or adoptive parents to children in need.

“You can’t afford to turn away loving families,” stated Ellen Kahn, HRC’s Family Project director and lead of the All Children-All Families initiative. “We’re delighted Little City is providing an example to other foster care agencies in Illinois in making a purposeful commitment to LGBT families who have a desire to provide a loving home environment to children in need.”

Recognized by the state of Illinois as a leader in human services, for more than 50 years, Little City has operated as one of the state’s most established and prominent nonprofit organizations serving children and adults with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Little City’s foster care and adoption program has provided innovative, individualized and community-based treatment to children and their families for more than 15 years and has consistently achieved a greater than 95 percent placement stability rate.

“We’ve been working on this initiative for almost four years,” added Little City Community Services Operations manager Emily Rawsky. “Our children deserve the very best homes and families and we’ve made a commitment to make this work for them; we were very intentional about it.”

For information, visit www.littlecity.org or contact Sally Blake at sblake@littlecity.org or (847) 221-7831.

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