Your Homes Newcastle (YHN) has been an avid and vocal supporter of LGBTplus rights for a long time, but we don’t want to stop there – we’re always seeking to improve our offer and increase the support we provide to our customers and staff
This year, we were thrilled to place at number 28 in the national Stonewall Top 100 Employers Work Place Equality Index, the highest position for any organisation in the North East and the second highest housing provider in the countr
This ranking obviously demonstrates that we’re considered to be a very LGBT friendly employer, but it’s not just a badge we wear, albeit proudly, without there being some serious work going on all of the time to make sure we still deserve it.
I’m joint Chair of our Proud@YHN staff network group, which was formed when we merged our LGBT group with our allies group, and throughout the week commencing 15 May, we’ll be recognising IDAHOBiT, the international day against homophobia, transphobia and biphobia with both staff and customers.
For the third year running, we’ll be lighting up our multi-story tower blocks at Riverside Dene with rainbow lights that are visible from miles away. This really gets people talking and we’ve had a fantastic response to it in the past, particularly on social media.
Our work with staff will involve helping them to understand more about some of the issues faced by our LGBT staff and customers, and providing them with an opportunity to demonstrate their support for both groups, as well as their own friends and family. We’ll be displaying posters around our buildings and all of our large screens, including those in our executive team members’ offices, will be displaying messages of support.
We’ve previously held screenings of the Newcastle-based television series Boy Meets Girl, which stars transgender actress Rebecca Root as a transgender woman who starts a new relationship with a younger man. Many staff thoroughly enjoyed the screenings and there was lots of interesting debate afterwards, which we hope to build on this year.
Our staff really get behind anything like this, and, as a group, we’re all very supportive of all minority groups. A couple of years ago we had a one minute shout out against hate crime on May 17 and it got so loud that one person actually smashed a plate in their energetic response!
So, while we hope the office crockery is safe this year, we’ve no doubt YHN’s support of the International Day against homophobia, transphobia and biphobia will be equally passionate.
Andrew Baker, Co-Chair, Proud@YHN
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