Mersey Care’s Transcend gender clinic provides flexible support to trans and non-binary people. The service has made great progress recently in becoming fully commissioned and assisting research into the mental health needs of diverse young people. In her blog, Dr Laura Power, Acting Clinical Lead and Educational Lead for Transcend reflects on attending Liverpool Pride to represent and celebrate the work the clinic is doing to support the LGBTIQA+ community.
Liverpool Pride 2025 was a joyful celebration of community and care.
This year marked my third time attending with my family and I was proud to also represent Mersey Care’s Transcend Team, which has made such fantastic progress and impact this year.
It was a truly beautiful day. The love, joy and solidarity shown by the LGBTIQA+ community and its allies was truly moving. I was reminded of just how vital the service provided by Transcend is.
One of my favourite moments was getting to watch incredible performers bring some of my favourite musical theatre numbers to life, and spotting queer content creators I admire from social media in real life, it was such a thrill!
Now that Transcend is fully commissioned, I’m excited to share that we’re planning to formally participate in Liverpool Pride 2026. We hope to host a Transcend information table, where service users and allies can stop by, connect and learn more about the work we do.
We are always looking to the future and thinking how to improve care for our service users. For example, the clinic recently helped to recruit for a study called ORIGIN (Optimising cultural expeRIences for mental health in underrepresented younG people onlINe). This aims to listen to the mental health needs of diverse young people and develop an online arts and culture intervention to reduce depression and anxiety.
I’m incredibly proud of the dedication shown by both Transcend and Mersey Care in delivering vital, affirming care to our community. We remain deeply committed to:
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Advancing medical and healthcare professional education on gender-affirming care
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Engaging in research to continuously improve the services we provide
Here’s to building a future where everyone can live with pride, dignity and access to the care they deserve.
