Trans Lifeline Staff Break & Services Update

Trans Lifeline Staff Break & Services Update

Updated 11/30/21

Dear Community:

We hope summer has brought you some return to community, joy, and reconnecting after these heavy months. At Trans Lifeline, we are investing in those of us in our community that do the work of caring for each other, because sustainable movements depend on sustainable practices.

After a heavy year of supporting our community through the ongoing pandemic, Trans Lifeline’s staff are taking a break in order to counteract burnout, heal secondary trauma, transition the Hotline to a new leadership structure, and intentionally rebuild our systems for the future.

Our services will be under construction and at reduced capacity. We will provide updates throughout this time.

For now, here’s what this means for our services:

HOTLINE:

Hotline: The Hotline is under construction and operating at reduced capacity: Hours: 5pm ET / 2pm PT – 1am ET / 10pm PT, 7 days a week.

Here are some ideas for support in the meantime, and we hope to return better than ever.

Línea directa en español: La línea está abierta con capacidad reducida hasta nuevo aviso. Puedes dejarnos un mensajes de voz solicitando recursos y te devolveremos la llamada en orden el orden que fue recibida.

Family & Friends Hotline: Our Friends & Family service is operating at reduced capacity. Please leave a message and an operator will return your call in the order it was received, with a delay. For more immediate support, call the main Hotline during open hours.

MICROGRANTS:

Name Change Microgrants will open on January 31, 2022.

To care for our community during this time, we’ve pledged $56,500 to community-based organizations for microgrants supporting trans people with name changes, and $24,000 to migrant organizations for microgrants to trans asylum seekers.

Commissary & Post-Release Microgrants via Inside Advocacy will be processed via snail mail starting Sept 1.

The next HRT Microgrant cycle of 24 grants opens December 1. 2021.

We didn’t decide to take this pause lightly. It can be hard for those of us who do care work to remember that everything isn’t going to fall apart just because we stop to rest. We take our cues from nature, following the work of adrienne maree brown and emergent strategy: there are pauses, moments of rest and inactivity everywhere in the natural world. We want to remind you of the power of rest too, and if you need support during this time, we’ve put together this guide for what to do if you can’t get through to the hotline.

Our work is a clear reminder that community-based alternatives to police and medical services mean that our community relies on each other – which includes us. Our whole team apologizes for the impact that reduced vital services have on our community. These indeterminate timeframes are the best way we can be transparent with our community about the time we need to redesign and migrate systems we’ve grown out of to make our work more accessible, efficient, sustainable, and equitable – with the support of Freedom Verses equity consultants. We commit to updating you along the way as we work hard to fix old systems that support you better.

We hope for some warm, slow sweetness for you this summer, and commit to continuing to improve this vital community infrastructure for the future.

Yours in rest & rebuilding,
The TL Team