Supporting LGBT+ History Month

February is LGBT+ History Month promoting equality and diversity and increasing the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community. Here at Co-operative Care Colne Valley, we want to be a part of celebrating this fantastic message, so we are sharing a couple of thoughts in the context of our home care services and highlighting some resources we have been inspired by.

Why are we supporting LGBT+ History Month?

This year’s theme is Body, Mind and Spirit which feels very apt as we are just about to launch our home and social care services to local people in Marsden, Slaithwaite, Golcar, Linthwaite and the wider Colne Valley and we know that the care and support we want to deliver needs to cover all three areas of that theme. We want our home care services to extend to everyone we will be supporting and to everyone within our whole team.

We want all our staff, volunteers and user members as well as the wider community to know that whilst we, of course, comply with all the equality and non-discriminatory legislation, we want to go beyond being ‘just not-discriminating’ to being proactively inclusive.

We know that many people who are older or disabled are being left behind because of the way our society is set up as it does not take many things into consideration – from accessibility, to the language we use and to the way we often think about people who might need some extra help. In a similar way we want to recognise that many LGBT+ people still face discrimination and might worry about ‘being out’ and/or bringing their full selves to work, to volunteering roles or into any other spaces.

We really like the work of LGBT+ History month charity who want to ‘promote equality and diversity for the benefit of the public’ and are doing this through ‘increasing the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (“LGBT+”) people, their history, lives and their experiences in the curriculum and culture of educational and other institutions, and the wider community’.

We think that changes are possible, that love is love, people are people and and as the tagline of this year’s resources says we can be ‘celebrating our present and creating our future’ – in all our diversity, with all our different talents, skills and experiences to share and contribute in whatever roles we might have in our communities.

The new Pride Flag which is at the top of the page has been downloaded from the LGBT+ History month page – have a look at their website for some really interesting reading, listening and watching.

If you are interested in finding out more about our home care services please contact us here or via info@valleycare.coop or 01484 970837.