To the Trans and Gender Diverse Community:
Your Community Health apologises wholeheartedly for the inadequate service you have received from us. We care deeply about offering great healthcare and support to our communities and recognise that we have not delivered on our promise to you.
We want to be upfront with you about the current impacts to our Trans and Gender Diverse in Community Health (TGDiCH) Program, as well as the work we are doing to improve your experience and repair your trust.
Due to workforce shortages, we have been without a GP in our TGDiCH Program and have had to pause new client intakes for an extended period. Our waitlist has unintentionally put pressure on you and resulted in delays accessing your healthcare and prescriptions. Simultaneously, our non-TGD-specialist GP service has been running at capacity and unable to accommodate new clients, regardless of their trans or cisgender identity.
We acknowledge that these occurrences were understood by the community as ‘Your Community Health not accepting trans people’. We apologise for this misunderstanding and want to assure you that trans and gender diverse people are welcome at Your Community Health. The care we provide to you is incredibly important to us and we have been steadily increasing our peer-led workforce to help us improve our approach. We have recently recruited a specialist GP for the TGDiCH Program, and our top priorities are resolving our waitlist and continuing to rebuild capacity in this area. From there, we will focus on resuming the intake of pending clients and increasing our response time.
We are working hard to make Your Community Health and our services welcoming, safe, affirming every time, and inclusive for LGBTIQA+ staff, volunteers, and clients. As part of this, our staff are receiving refresher training in LGBTIQA+ inclusion and TGD inclusive practice.
It has been brought to our attention that Community members have endured negative experiences when enquiring about our TGDiCH Program through client access points. The safety and wellbeing of our current and potential clients is of the utmost importance, and we are deeply sorry for these encounters. We are reviewing the client journey across all access points to ensure you have a better experience in future.
We are currently investigating these incidents and fully utilising community feedback in redesigning service delivery and working towards a meaningful resolution. Thank you to all who have shared their feedback with us. We appreciate your openness, courage, and willingness to work with us to improve our services.
We would also like to offer you the opportunity to share your feedback and ask questions at a Community Engagement Session. We look forward to having an open and honest conversation with you and working towards better service for the TGD Community. Please book here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tgdich-community-engagement-qa-tickets-318648294627.
Thank you.
The Your Community Health team