Kathryn Whitehead is co-founder and executive director of the Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth, a youth-driven organization in support of the protection of the human rights of institutionalized youth experiencing behavioral, emotional and mental health challenges. She started CAFETY in 2006, while a senior at Hunter College, after having experienced inhumane treatment at an unregulated 'therapeutic' boarding school as an adolescent.
Ms Whitehead formed CAFETY in an effort to give voice to youth survivors and combat disempowering and dehumanizing practices through organized support for substantive policy change and support for legislation that affirms the human rights of youth and of those with disabilities. After joining the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment (ASTART), a multidisciplinary organization sponsored by the University of South Florida whose purpose it is to increase awareness of the problem of inadequately regulated or monitored facilities, Ms Whitehead recognized the critical need to bring together formerly institutionalized youth to effectively address their shared grievances. She has spoken on the issue at numerous conference over the years, including having been invited to speak at the Gwen Iding Brogden Distinguished Lecture Series Plenary Session at University of South Florida Systems of Care Conference, has been twice published in the Journal of Orthopsychiatry and has testified before Congress, sharing her experiences and in support of the Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens Act of 2008.
She resides and works in New York City with plans to attend law school in the Fall 2009.