New post open in LGBTQ Affairs
Program manager will facilitate transgender community issues
Santa Clara County is bolstering its services aimed at the South Bay’s diverse and often marginalized transgender community through a new program manager dedicated to that population — the second such post in the nation.
The program manager will serve as a “trainer, mediator and facilitator” for the transgender community, who face unique challenges at school, the workplace, in hospitals, correctional facilities and elsewhere.
“We are all becoming more aware of the special issues that surround trans people,” said Supervisor Ken Yeager, who led the effort to create the position. “It’s a given that they are going to have special needs, and that they are also very vulnerable. I don’t think a lot of our services provide the sensitivity that our trans population requires.”
Yeager, who in 1992 became the first openly gay elected official in Santa Clara County, created the county’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs in 2015. The new position will be contained in that office.
Office director Maribel Martinez said it’s important to have a post specific to the transgender community.
“What we’ve learned in past year and a half of this office being open is that the transgender population is one of the most underserved,” Martinez said. “They are the most vulnerable for housing instability, for suicidality, for being unemployed or underemployed and for working in places where legal compliance with antidiscrimination laws are not enforced .”
While San Francisco has such a position, such supportive ser- Online extra: For more news on Santa Clara County, go WWW.MERCURYNEWS.COM/LOCATION/ CALIFORNIA/BAY-AREA/SOUTH-BAY/ SANTA-CLARA-COUNTY/
vices are rare even as more people identify as transgender, said Yeager.
“As people become more comfortable coming out as trans and needing medical attention, we need to respond to it,” he said. “One of the jobs here is to train and inform county staff of particular needs, and making sure they get the right kind of services. It’s not automatic.”
Paul Escobar, vice president of the longtime South Bay LGBTQ advocacy group BAYMEC, said that often times people providing healthcare services to transgender men and women are “unfamiliar, insensitive or worse” with transgender issues.
“This position will go a long way towards addressing where transgender people struggle to access services and where they are disproportionately affected by violence and discrimination,” Escobar said. “It’s timely that the county is moving forward with this program, given that there is so much national attention from the president’s outright discrimination of transgender service members.”
County supervisors unanimously approved the position in budgeting sessions earlier this summer. The advertised salary is between $96,000 and $117,000, and applications are being accepted through the end of the month.