How YMCA Together supports the LGBTQ+ community
February 2025 marks LGBT+ History Month, an annual celebration of the history, resilience, and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-binary (LGBTQ+) individuals.
It’s also a chance to reflect on the ongoing journey toward equality and the civil rights movements that shape progress.
To mark the occasion, we spoke with Laura Anderton, YMCA Together’s Director of HR, to explore how our organisation promotes inclusivity and offers unwavering support for the LGBTQ+ community in everything we do.
How does YMCA Together help LGBTQ+ individuals feel safe and seen?
Helping people feel safe and seen runs as a golden thread through all we do. For me, it’s crucial that potential employees get a feel for how inclusive our organisation is right from the start.
You can see and feel how we care about the people we work alongside from the moment you visit our website or walk into our services. It’s so important for us to sustain our soul as a caring place where people can bring out their true selves without fear of judgment.
Something I hear regularly from new staff is how welcoming and caring we are. To do this, we need to continue honest and open discussion through our EDI (Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion) working group, staff forums and reflective practice at YMCA Together.
What does LGBT+ History Month mean to YMCA Together?
This year’s LGBT+ History Month is particularly poignant for us as it celebrates everyone in our communities. We want to thank those who have been activists and created ripples of social change so we can live in a more accepting and inclusive world.
In February, we’re honouring the contributions of people and communities who have tackled significant struggles, particularly those facing health inequalities today. We’ll also focus on what changes we still need to make and on LGBTQ+ education. Many of our services will host events and showcase LGBTQ+ history, famous activists, flags and pronouns.
Why is diversity important to YMCA Together?
Having diverse people working for us and living in our services brings richness. The people who work alongside us are experts, and we can learn so much from them, including how we can be better and make our policies, practices and services more inclusive for everyone.
It’s important to us that people feel comfortable sharing their stories and lived experiences. People need people with shared commonality so we can support each other in a way that feels authentic and relatable.
Embracing diversity and recognising our gaps in knowledge helps us as a leadership team to take feedback on board so that we can adapt our support for the people in our care.
How does the YMCA Together’s recruitment process ensure equality, diversity and inclusion?
Recruitment is an excellent chance to build on our diverse workforce.
We ensure we write gender-neutral job descriptions to avoid exclusion, advertise our jobs across various communities, and practice anonymised recruitment. This process helps eradicate any demographic and cultural cues when shortlisting and removes any biases.
We don’t heavily emphasise what qualifications a person has, but rather, we recruit people based on our SHREK values to teach people the skills and knowledge they need to carry out their roles. We also hold our Navajo Chartermark, which underpins our commitment to LGBTQ+ safe recruitment.
What is the significance of the Navajo Chartermark?
Navajo is an equality charter mark sponsored by In Trust Merseyside and Cheshire. It expresses a commitment to good practice, knowledge, and recognition from organisations regarding the issues and barriers faced by LGBTQ+ communities.
We are assessed every 2 years on the 10 criteria, ensuring we have robust policies, procedures, recruitment, training and inclusion in the workplace, which we can evidence.
It’s a worthwhile and humbling experience that we celebrate each year at the Navajo Annual Awards ceremony. One of our staff members won an award in 2023 for the Young Person’s Outstanding Contribution to the LGBTQ+ community. The research explored how people’s identities affect how they experience stigma and isolation in services and, in turn, how this affects their recovery or resettlement journey.
Are you currently working on any LGBTQ+ initiatives?
Our dream is to develop an allyship programme for people in our services.
We’d love to create allies who can advocate for racial equality, transgender people and women. A programme like this will enable better education and training and help bridge this gap by supporting employees and residents in every part of the organisation to take specific action and make a meaningful change.
One of our EDI Champions, Anna, will soon host our first-ever World Café Conversation across our Refuges, where we’ll have 3 to 4 tables of people with a set of questions specifically targeted to the purpose of the meeting. For example, the meeting might ask:
“How inclusive do you feel our services are?” or “How can we best support LGBTQ+ residents within our services?
People then move around, and at the end, we’ll have a “harvest” session where we open up for people’s thoughts, reflections and actions.
It’ll be great, and I’m excited to support Anna.
How will YMCA Together continue to champion LGBTQ+ causes?
We can do this in various ways. We need to keep the conversations going around the table, and LGBTQ+ initiatives should remain at the heart of what we do. As leaders, we’ll continue to be role models, ensuring we are the keepers of our inclusive culture.
We’ll continue working with fellow organisations such as Sahir House and Navajo to ensure we support our staff and support people in our services in the best way possible – without fear of judgement.
YMCA Together is the most open, caring and welcoming organisation I have worked for, and we will continue our work to ensure everyone feels the same.