TransActual are delighted to announce that we’ve been funded for 3 years of work. Thank you to The National Lottery Community Fund – the largest community funder in the UK – and to the players of the National Lottery for your support.
In the past decade, life for trans people in the UK has become increasingly challenging. Transphobic hate crime has increased 14 fold, waiting times for NHS treatment have continued to rise, and the spread of misinformation has made it harder for trans people to access our rights and protections. By funding TransActual and our work for trans people, The National Lottery Community Fund is supporting work to improve the lives of some of the most marginalised people in the UK. They’re helping TransActual to work for a world where trans people can be safe, valued and active members of their local communities and of
society.
What is the money going to be spent on?
We’ll be using the funding to:
- Conduct research into the lived experiences of trans people.
- Create resources for trans people on our rights and protections.
- Run workshops for trans people and trans community leaders to ensure that people are equipped to self-advocate and to advocate for others.
- Equip trans people with the knowledge and confidence to talk to their elected representatives and other policy makers, and co-ordinate a week of action to ensure that as many policy makers as possible have knowingly met a trans person.
- Run a health professionals survey to find out what’s needed to help them to improve care for trans people in general healthcare settings.
- Re-develop our information and resource repository for healthcare professionals.
- Develop a self-assessment tool for Integrated Care Boards so that they’re able to track what they’re doing well and what they need to improve on when tackling health inequalities for trans people.
- Develop our training and consultancy offer for healthcare providers and professionals to ensure that we’re doing what we can to support healthcare providers to play their part in reducing health inequalities for trans people.
- Build TransActual into a sustainably funded and resourced organisation which is able to work for the UK’s trans communities for as long as we’re needed. This is going to include working to improve our funding mix and looking at how we support and communicate with our volunteers.
Why have we chosen these priorities?
TransActual are working towards a world where trans people can live safely, in dignity and with access to the healthcare that we need.
Trans people’s experiences of health inequality are well documented, and gaps in support for healthcare professionals are at the root of many of them. By providing training and resources for healthcare professionals, we hope to contribute to reducing health inequalities for trans people.
Public dialogue often reduces trans people’s lives to something theoretical rather than a human experience. We want to bring policy makers and trans people together, to help the people with the power to change our lives to understand that we are people with hopes and aspirations, we’re not a debate.
We hope that empowering trans people to self-advocate and seek redress when their rights are breached will strengthen the implementation of laws such as the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Duty of the Equality Act. This will, in turn, promote safety and dignity for trans people across the UK. When trans people feel safe and valued in their communities, they will feel more able and more willing to participate in them and form connections with others across them.
What happens next?
You’ll have seen that we’re recruiting for two new members of staff. We’re also in the process of recruiting two consultant researchers who will be conducting the research projects mentioned earlier in this blog. Getting started quickly with this research will help us to keep track of how trans people’s lived experiences are changing and to monitor plan the work needed to support healthcare professionals. Additionally, lots of people have been asking for an update of Trans Lives 2021 and we’re keen to deliver on that.
You can keep track of all the work we’ve got planned via our newsletter, the Our Work page on our website, or via our social media channels.
