PTS receives grant from Ontario Trillium Foundation

Pink Triangle Services (PTS) has received a $26,400 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation for TransAction, a program that will focus on support services for the trans community.

The funds will be used to implement the first stage of the program, which will include hiring a coordinator to establish a resource directory for transsexual and transgender people.

Claudia Van den Heuvel, executive director of PTS, says the grant will also be used to contact service providers to see if their policies and procedures address serving trans people in a positive way.

“To get an idea of what they are providing, how comfortable they are serving trans people and whether or not they are interested in having some additional support from PTS.”

Van den Heuvel says that PTS will offer workshops to help providers understand the needs of transsexual and transgender people and provide them with access to the resource directory.

The second phase of TransAction will include the establishment of counselling services at PTS. The final stage will see a health clinic for trans people created in Ottawa, similar to the services offered at the Sherbourne Health Centre in Toronto.

“Just because a lot of trans people are either on waiting lists when it comes to accessing hormone replacement therapy or seeing doctors,” says Van den Heuvel. “We just want to see if there is some kind of solution similar to what’s being done in Toronto, obviously on a much smaller scale, to make sure trans people are being served.”

For future grants, PTS will approach the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, the Ministry of Community and Social Services, and the Champlain Local Health Integration Network.

“Each phase follows the next one. It’s good for funders to see that something is actually being done, that something is actually working, and you have some kind of information to support it,” says Van den Heuvel. “That is part of the reason why we decided to implement this in phases. The project as a whole would have been about a $300,000 project.”