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New online GP Guide for supporting trans patients

Local NHS Brighton and Hove Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) launches the country’s first online guide for supporting trans patients in GP surgeries.

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The guide’s publication follows a recent Parliamentary inquiry into Transgender Equality in the UK, which published a report earlier this month claiming that:

♦     Trans people encounter significant problems in using general NHS services due to the attitude of some clinicians and other staff when providing care for trans patients

♦     This is attributable to lack of knowledge and understanding

♦    and GPs in particular too often lack an understanding of trans identities, the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, referral pathways into Gender Identity Services, and their own role in prescribing hormone treatment.

The CCG’s guide has been developed with input from local transgender people in Brighton and Hove and aims to help GPs and other clinical staff in General Practice support patients accessing NHS Specialist Gender Identity Services.

According to estimates, at least 2,760 trans people live in the city, with many more coming to the city to study and work.

Last year, Brighton & Hove City Council published the results of the city’s first ever Trans Needs Assessment.

The report revealed that:

♦  Just 1 in 5 trans people in the city said they were in good health (compared with four out of five in the wider population).

♦ Four in five had also experienced depression and one in three had self-harmed in the last five years.

♦ The assessment also identified that improvements could be made to trans people’s experience of health services, including local GP and specialist services, and that long waiting times for gender identity services had a detrimental impact on the lives of those affected.

The Needs Assessment recommended the development of good quality information for clinicians on support for trans people accessing healthcare in the city.

The experience of approaching a GP for advice and support can be daunting for many transgender people.

Local trans patient, Michael, explains: “When I first went to my GP’s surgery to seek support around my trans identity a number of years ago I was incredibly nervous. The locum GP I saw was, though well-meaning, not very well-informed. I remember him asking me if I liked cars and football – an entirely surreal line of questioning, unrelated to helping me access the support I needed. I left with an informal diagnosis of ‘metrosexual’ gender identity and (more helpfully) a forward referral which I’d had to instruct him in writing.

“Since then, I’ve been really pleased to see how much work has been done on a local and national level to improve services for trans people, and am proud to have played my small part in some of that work. I’m lucky to have a much more understanding and knowledgeable GP now than I did then,  but am so pleased to see this guide being released as it will help all GPs across the city to offer a competent, supportive service to the trans community.

“So often we can find ourselves passed from pillar to post, having to educate those responsible for our care; I hope that this guide can help to relieve that burden – promoting a better standard of understanding, a better standard of communication and a better standard of care for everyone.”

Dr Katie Stead
Dr Katie Stead

Dr Katie Stead, Clinical Lead for Primary Care and Public Health at the CCG and a member of Brighton and Hove’s Trans Needs Assessment Steering Group, said: “This new guide is important because although there are many good examples of excellent primary care for our trans population, there is also a lack of education and information for GPs available both nationally and locally. We hope it goes some way in plugging this gap locally and will give GPs the confidence to work with trans patients to provide great care.”

NHS Brighton and Hove CCG has compiled a five-point checklist called 5 things you need to know when you speak to your GP, that addresses some of the concerns and scenarios trans patients may encounter when they visit their GP, drawing on the experiences of local trans patients.

To read the five point checklist, click here:

To read NHS Brighton and Hove CCG’s Trans Guidance Guide for GPs, click here: 

To read the Transgender Equality in the UK was published by the Government Equalities Office in January 2016, click here:

 

Portsmouth University marks LGBT History Month

University of Portsmouth celebrates LGBT History Month in February with a film festival and a free public lecture.

Dr Dominic Janes
Dr Dominic Janes

On Wednesday, February 3, Dr Dominic Janes, Reader in Cultural History and Visual Studies at Birkbeck, University of London will deliver a lecture.

In Visions of Queer Martyrdom: sexual and spiritual lives before lesbian and gay liberation, Dr Janes will argue that religion and homosexuality are not as antagonistic as they might appear.

The academic will demonstrate that Catholic forms of Christianity played a key role in the evolution of the culture and visual expression of homosexuality and same-sex desire in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Touching on everything from the ‘queer families’ of Victorian monasteries to the work of writers and artists such as Oscar Wilde and Derek Jarman, the lecture promises to illustrate both the limitations and ongoing significance of Christianity as an inspiration for expressions of homoerotic desire.

Dr Janes’ free public lecture will take place at the Portland Building, University of Portsmouth, Portland St, Portsmouth PO1 3AH on Wednesday, February 3, from 6pm to 7pm.

To book a free place, click here:

Meanwhile, on Thursday, February 4, the Pride LGBT Film Festival gets under way with a screening of The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as pioneering computer scientist and code-breaker Alan Turing, who was chemically castrated after being charged with gross indecency.

On Thursday, February 11, The Portsmouth Film Society season, supported by the University’s LGBT Staff Forum [LINK], continues with 52 Tuesdays. Shot in real-time every Tuesday over a year, the award-winning Australian film charts the evolving relationship between a girl and her mother, who is transitioning to become a man.

On Thursday, February 18, is A Girl At My Door, about a Korean police academy graduate who is transferred to a small village due to ‘misconduct’.

The season concludes on Wednesday, February 24 with the premiere of Departure, a French-British co-production about a teenage boy wrestling with his sexuality while on a family holiday in the south of France.

All screenings will take place in Portland Building, University of Portsmouth, Portland St, Portsmouth PO1 3AH at 7pm.

For tickets and more information about the film festival, click here:

 

‘Daring Hearts’ e-book from QueenSpark Books for LGBT History month

Daring HeartsQueenSpark Books makes new Daring Hearts e-book available for LGBT History month.

Daring Hearts the book that chronicles lesbian and gay lives in 50’s and 60’s Brighton has been made available in e-book format and is available for LGBT History Month.

The book is a searing and informative collection of life stories based on taped interviews with forty lesbians and gay men who spoke openly about their lives in and around Brighton, and which was originally published in collaboration with Brighton Ourstory Project, and is not currently in print.

In the fifties and sixties the town enjoyed a national reputation as a haven for gay people and it was viewed as a relatively tolerant place for people to visit and live.

Lesbians and gay men came from all over Britain for holidays and to settle down.

Brighton was considered a type of Eldorado, a promised land, and this tradition remains today, where its thriving gay community is one of the largest in the country, outside London.

TED one of the contributors said: “I remember one night at the Curtain Club when they had a fight… This big, butch sailor decides he’s gonna lam into one of the queans ’cause he’s not getting what he wants. Well, the quean laid him out of course, didn’t she? You should have seen it, dear, they were carrying this butch omi out on the stretcher and there’s she, standing waving her handbag like a demented windmill saying, ‘THE COW, THE COW!”

A growing number of books on gay themes were being passed from hand to hand and read until they fell apart. Some were sensational pulp novels, others such as Maureen Duffy’s The Microcosm or Rodney Garland’s The Heart in Exile were sensitive treatments of gay life by lesbian and gay authors.

On television, dramas and documentaries were attempting serious coverage of the subject and Nancy Spain was strutting her fearlessly butch stuff. On the Home Service, Jules and Sandy were treating the unsuspecting listeners of Round the Horne to bravura displays of polari.

SHEILA another contributor said: “Early sixties, Big Kay as we called her, she tried to open a private club. Jacaranda it was called and it had a private opening night party. There was no drinks allowed, you see, they weren’t allowed to sell them. But we were, naturally, having drinks but it was terribly unofficial. They’d only been charging, I think, a shilling for a drink, but they had been charging. And to our horror, the police raided us. Well, I think we all wanted to be violently sick. They didn’t arrest anybody, but they walked through the rooms and you can imagine what sort of expression they had on their faces, to see all the girls there, all dressed up. The couples were dancing, and all of a sudden somebody said, ‘The police have come.’ And I think everybody just stood stock still…”

Brighton was moving from post-war austerity towards an idea of a permissive society. Books, films, meetings, legislation, small acts of public courage together made a huge impression on lesbian and gay life in the city.

“It was wonderful to go to these things because you could just be yourself – you hadn’t to pretend or be afraid to make a glance or a gesture or say what you thought. It was wonderful to be free,” said Barbara.

You can now buy the book using Amazon Kindle, Google Play, the Apple store, and other Android outlets. Go to your chosen website and search by title for the books.

To find out more about this and other Queenspark Books and events this year, click here:

QueenSpark is a non-profit community publishing and writing organisation, based in Brighton and Hove. They publish books about local people’s lives, run creative writing groups and facilitate oral history projects.

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