A case study: LGBTQ+ and Allies Wellbeing Group at schools
Off the Record’s LGBTQ+ team concluded 2023 with a consultation for local LGBTQ+ young people, their parents/ carers, and professionals who support them. We asked what areas people thought we should focus our LGBTQ+ work on, to help us shape the future of the service, and the top responses were:
LGBTQ+ Outreach to other spaces, such as school, college, youth groups
Group support in schools.
We also found that all reported incidents to BANES Council’s Report Incidents of Discrimination (RID) (April to October 2023) occurred at “school/ college” or “on the way to school/ college”.
In the consultation, the top three issues for young people were voted as:
bullying/ harassment/ hate crime
mental health
intersectional identity
As a result, we designed a project aimed at creating greater inclusivity and awareness in schools. Our goal is two fold: to facilitate safe spaces for LGBTQ+ young people and their allies where they can come together to support on another, and, to increase wider awareness and support in the school through training for staff.
Below is a case study of our most recent partnership with a school.
Case Study: October - December 2024
How it worked
Assembly:
On the first week of term, Off the Record delivered two assemblies. The first was delivered online to secondary students, and the second was delivered in-person to Sixth Form. Topics covered in the video included:
About the charity Off the Record and support available to young people,
Information about the LGBTQ+ and Allies wellbeing group sessions we will be delivering in the school term,
Example of group agreement,
LGBTQ+ definitions,
How many people identify as LGBTQ+ (according to the 2021 England and Wales Census),
Overview of LGBTQ+ history and laws in the UK,
Overview of the Equality Act 2010,
Overview of British Values,
Homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic bullying, it’s impacts, and how to seek support,
How students can support their LGBTQ+ peers,
Sign-posting to support at school, locally, and nationally.
Weekly sessions:
The wellbeing sessions ran for half an hour every Thursday lunchtime for six weeks.
Week 1 – Introductions, creating a group agreement, shared plan for upcoming sessions, games.
Week 2 – Learnt about different LGBTQ+ identities and games.
Week 3 – Managing wellbeing and what energises and drains us.
Week 4 – Bullying, hate crimes and discrimination, how to identify them, how to seek support, young people shared their experiences.
Week 5 – Role models. Group discussed what made a person a role model, young people shared who they looked-up to, discussed LGBTQ+ role models in various professions and from intersectional backgrounds.
Week 6 – Review and signposting to resources at school, at Off the Record, and in the community.
Who attended?
The assembly was delivered twice. We delivered virtually to 9 secondary classes, and in-person to 20 Sixth Form students.
A total 5 young people (4 from Sixth Form and 1 from Secondary) attended the wellbeing group sessions. Some young people visited the group briefly or stood outside the classroom for several sessions before they felt confident to join in. Two further students did not gain confidence to fully join the group by the end of the six sessions.
40% of participants identified as LGBTQ+, with 40% identifying as allies, and 20% preferring not to say (results shown in Image 1).
Feedback
Young people’s feedback:
Young people were asked to use tokens and jars with emotion labels to vote on how they felt before and after coming to each wellbeing session. Responding to young people’s feedback, jars for “excited”, “hyper”, and “hungry” were added from the fourth session onwards. An example of the voting jars can be seen in Image 2 and the term’s results are shown in Image 3.
Young people used stickers and prompts on A3 paper to vote on what they felt they got out of each session (and example shown in Image 4 and the term’s results shown in Image 5).
Young people were asked for further verbal feedback. They told us they attended the group to “chat”, “meet new people”, “have a laugh”, said they “learnt about role models”, “have enjoyed it”, and asked the OTR team to return to school next term.
Staff feedback:
We received feedback from two staff members who were key in facilitating our partnership work with the school.
Both members of staff rated the project as 10 out of 10 and said they would recommend this project to another school. They felt the project had made a difference by providing wellbeing support for students.
Staff shared that “the students really valued this space and session”. They observed that “having outside staff deliver the content, with far greater insight and expertise than our school staff, provided an open and welcoming opportunity for our students to feel safe and explore this important topic. This is not something that we as a staff would be able to offer or deliver ourselves”.
School staff shared similar observations to that of OTR staff in that “anxiety” prevented more students from becoming involved in the weekly group. They suggested that support to further promote the group in school would be helpful.
Future plans
Off the Record have been busy delivering the same wellbeing project at another school from February – April 2025. Our goal is to deliver this work with emphasis on schools that are more rural, to reach young people who might otherwise find it hard to access our LGBTQ+ support based in Bath.
If you work for a school in Bath and North East Somerset, and you’re interested in having us come along and deliver this work free of charge, then please reach out to space@offtherecord-banes.com to make an enquiry. Please note, we are booked up for the rest of this school year but looking to support schools from September 2025 onwards.