Supporting transgender patients and staff
Mersey Care wants the best people working for us – from a wide range of backgrounds and with many experiences, people who have the right skills and values to support our patients and service users. Those are the essential qualifications to be part of our Mersey Care family.
Nikki is a nurse and works in our Halton services and wants to share her story. In the video below she's open about her transition, she discusses how it was received by other members of staff, patients, and how she felt. Nikki speaks directly about her past and even covers topics some may feel challenged by – including her dead name.
Nikki speaks for herself and her views are her own. As an organisation we respect her opinions, her experiences and her role as a senior nurse practitioner.
She believes Mersey Care has helped her during this journey and wants her story to encourage others, including anyone thinking of joining the Trust, to know we're committed to inclusion.
As an employer, we welcome those who are trans or who have a trans history. We don’t expect you to tell us your history when you join us, although a designated person in Human Resources will need to know in case your insurance policy would be invalidated.
If the DBS check is going to reveal information in an applicant’s previous gender/name that would be printed on the DBS certificate, the office will contact the individual and discuss the options available. The policy sets out support mechanisms, both statutory and less formal, in detail.
Mersey Care agrees with NHS England that it is no longer the case that conditions where the assigned birth-sex is not congruent with the gender identity can be regarded as psychopathological. We recognise the changes being made by the World Health Organisation to terminology and recognition, and also restate the legal dimension as set out in the Human Rights Act 1998 and other policies.
Mersey Care’s Trust Wide Policy HR32 is called “Supporting Trans, Non-Binary and Non-Gender Colleagues and People Who Use Our Services”. Version 3 was adopted in 2021 and it takes time to clarify the terminology used to describe the terms, including the umbrella term trans. It’s useful to read the detailed definition in the document but the aim is always to make sure of maximum inclusiveness.
More information about Mersey Care's commitment to Equality and Diversity can be found on its specialised webpage.