Spring with the Queer Families project

In April we had a Queer Families meet-up where the children tried out stop-motion animation, while the parents had space to talk about how they explain to the young ones where their family came from.

Here’s the animation we created (very much led by the 2-4 year olds!): Queer Families animation

We also held an online event for LGBTQI+ people in Scotland who are wanting/trying to start a family, through conception and in other ways. The event was fully booked (32 attendees!) with much more interest, and participants expressed the need for an ongoing peer support space addressing their fertility/adoption/perinatal experiences as LGBTQI+ people.

We discussed intersecting barriers to starting a family in Scotland, including migration status, trans people’s (often lack of) access to reproductive support, economic position (i.e. not being wealthy enough to be considered as adoptive parents, cost of private fertility options and donor gametes, discrimination against LGBTQ compared to straight couples accessing fertility services, such as the condition couples ‘try naturally’ before being eligible for NHS IVF), disability and health conditions.

In this online event there was lots of discussion about the gap around LGBTQI+ people’s enjoyment of their reproductive rights and journeys starting a family in Scotland. With this in mind we put in an application for funding to set up a local (Greater Glasgow) and online peer support network, addressing perinatal health inequalities faced by this community.

At our Saturday meet-up in May new families joined us, and we planted wildflowers and helped out in the Rumpus Room garden.

The next meet-up is in on Saturday 8th June in Rumpus Room, 10:30 – 12:30pm. You can find out all the latest with the Queer Families project by following the Instagram account.