Social services holds transgender conference
Yellowknife authority aims to educate on LGBTQ issues
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
After taking a transgender child into its care, one social worker said the city's social services authority reached out to the Pride Centre of Edmonton to help educate teachers and parents about LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) needs.
Marie-Josee Nadeau - a social worker with the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority - said the organization held a two-day conference on caring for transgender youth - young people who identify with a gender different from their assigned sex.
The first day was for people in public service positions who will be working with the child, said Nadeau.
"It was for teachers, psychologists, councillors, nurses," she said. "A lot of people came. It was close to 40."
The following evening, 15 people attended a public talk about the struggles of transgender youth.
Nadeau said Mickey Wilson, the executive director of the Pride Centre of Edmonton, was enlisted to deliver two sessions - one for staff and one for parents - to discuss the specific needs of transgender students.
Wilson said he was briefed about the transgender youth in the care of social services when he was asked to deliver his talks. He said if the community is to support transgender youth there needs to a be a zero tolerance policy on discrimination and safe spaces for LGBTQ people need to be established.
"I've been here three days," he said, adding he's seen more than three transgender people in the city since he arrived.
"I don't know where people meet. There needs to be a safe space somewhere. Yellowknife would be poorer if every transgender person left."
Wilson said LGBTQ people face higher suicide rates, lack support groups in Western Canada, are more likely to be assaulted and to be kicked out of their homes. Wilson said he regularly delivers talks on the topic, relying on statistics from the United States because Canadian numbers pertaining to LGBTQ people do not exist.
"In Canada, we count almost nothing," said Wilson. "We have some studies that are available that tell us a little bit about the impact of bullying on LGBTQ kids. There were a couple Canadian studies released in the last couple of years showing the percentages of LGBTQ kids who experienced bullying but almost always in the school context.
"We don't, for example, collect statistics on how many trans people have experienced bullying in the hospital setting."
On Monday, Wilson said he hopes to return to the North.
"I'm hopeful that I can come up a couple more times to work with a broader cross-section of service providers," he said. "Not just (some) teachers and health professionals associated with one school and one child but perhaps all schools and maybe even broader in the region. I'm hopeful we can do more of that work up there and strengthen the capacity not only of service providers but also of the LGBTQ community in Yellowknife, so it can begin to provide that support in a more robust way."
