CARE FOR ALL: SHORE Centre’s Gender-Affirming Care clinic breaks down barriers
Regarding gender-affirming care, everyone has a role to play, says Kayla Orr, Executive Director of Sexual Health Options, Resources & Education (SHORE) Centre.
“Gender-affirming care should be interwoven into every aspect of service provision within this community,” Orr said. “Gender-affirming care means honouring, uplifting, and seeing yourself reflected in the spaces that you interact. It is vital to anticipate that there are going to be trans and non-binary people in your spaces and likely already using your services. That is gender-affirming care, and gender-affirming care at all levels is life-saving.”
Yet Orr said a satisfactory level of wrap-around care has been lacking in Waterloo Region for many years, and only recently have barriers begun to be removed and medical needs and wants in the community are being addressed in a more fulsome manner.
SHORE Centre was founded in 1972 as a birth-control centre and has expanded its services with its mission to offer exceptional and inclusive sexual and reproductive services that “uphold the dignity of everyone.”
Try as they have, service gaps within the community were particularly highlighted during the COVID-19 global pandemic, as was the case for many organizations, leading to conversations about what medical support was sought — and missing — across the complete gender spectrum in the region.
“We have a clinic, we have interested clinicians who are offering gender-affirming care through the other services that we offer; we offer abortion services for people of all identities, and we do that through a gender-affirming lens,” Orr said. “We offer trauma-informed services — that’s through a gender-affirming lens as well. And so, we were looking at ways in which we might be able to fill this need.”
Enter the Community Services Recovery Fund, a $400-million investment from the federal government to support charities and non-profits as they recover from the effects of COVID-19. As part of this fund, Waterloo Region Community Foundation (WRCF) is working with community foundations across Canada in collaboration with the Canadian Red Cross and United Way Centraide Canada.
Locally, WRCF partnered with United Way Waterloo Region Communities to distribute $3 million in funding to support 64 organizations across Waterloo Region.
As a recipient of this funding, SHORE Centre was able to hire a specialized coordinator, assess needs within the community, collect data and receive feedback, which paved the way for the establishment of the barrier-free gender-affirming care clinic, which had its soft launch on April 29, 2024, at 50 Westmount Rd. N. in Waterloo. To date, the clinic has already seen over 120 patients for care.
“I clearly remember what it felt like asking a doctor for HRT for the first time, and it was one of the most terrifying, vulnerable things I’ve ever done. When I transferred to SHORE, the fact that Dr. Thompson is also trans and that she was so warm and compassionate during my appointment made a night-and-day difference in my comfort level, and that’s something I’d want other trans people to have too, especially if it’s their first time seeking medical intervention.”
At the clinic, people seeking gender-affirming care who are 17 years of age and older can access professional medical care in a barrier-free environment. Services include gender-affirming hormone therapy, surgical referrals, gender dysphoria diagnosis, clinician letters for sex-marker designation change applications, and referrals to local peer support, counselling, and non-medical gender-affirming care providers.
“Our community has had very spotty, inconsistent access to gender-affirming care," Orr said, adding the reaction to this clinic from folks in the community has been “profound gratitude. We have been receiving some of the most overwhelming positive feedback from our community."
She added: “We all have a role to play in ensuring that every member of our community, our trans and non-binary community members, feel seen, valued, validated, and included in every aspect of the work that we do.”
The clinic wouldn’t have happened without the required funding.
“The support that we’ve received from WRCF has been instrumental in ensuring that we have the financial support to make it possible for us to even think about ventures like this,” Orr said. “It’s a really big undertaking to develop a new service offering and knowing that you have the financial and the emotional support of your community funders is critical to providing programming that is so needed within this community.”
“We were very fortunate to receive funding to make this idea a reality," she added.
To say the clinic has been long overdue would be an understatement.
“This has been something that our community has been desperately seeking and waiting for,” Orr said.
And to those in the community who reached out to ultimately spark this clinic?
“We’ve heard you, we’re responding and we are working to offer you the care that you need in your community," Orr said.
Those wishing to book appointments at the clinic can do so online and referrals can be sent by primary care clinicians through Ocean e-referral or fax.
For more information about SHORE Centre and the services they provide, visit shorecentre.ca.
To learn more about the Community Services Recovery Fund, and to see a list of Waterloo Region organizations funded through this program, go to wrcf.ca/news/csrf-results.