The attention unit and counselling between pairs of the OTD Chile had 422 attentions since January to December 2018 for transgender people, family and also couples. 97% of them attended to a counseling in pairs, a protected space where they gave them information in about their rights, access to health issues, a psychological support, where they can find support from other people from the community and other stuff. There were 161 people which 97 are male transsexuals, 45 female transsexuals’ users and 9 were non-binaries, also 10 family members and couples were there.
Most of the users are people between 18 and 22 years old (38 %), followed by others between the age of 23 and 27 (22%). While people under the age of 18 were 14%. People from other regions of the country came and made presence, people from Santiago of course, most of them, but also from Valparaíso, Rancagua, San Felipe, Melipilla, Peñaflor, Talagante, Chépica, Colina, El Monte, La Serena, Rengo, San Fernando and Talca.
The council team add one more person, which allowed to improve the coverage and to reduce the time while people were waiting. They did an online counseling for people who were not from Santiago, the capital of Chile.
The team was constituted by the psychologist Carol Barragan, the counselors for transgender people Leonel Catoni, Constanza De La Cerda and Lucas Araneda and also the family counselors Jimena Norambuena, Jacqueline Rodríguez and Karin Husch.
Michel Riquelme, The OTD Coordinator said: “The attention and counselling team is the unity of work which has more demand in our association, we try to build a unique model here in Chile which has been positioned thanks by the users who have recommend us, until now. It has an counseling and they gathered and welcome people who are just starting to experience, also to their families and we join them with community spaces which are very important for most of them. We are so thankful of their work and we hope to always bring a good attention, a very professional one. The service demand grows everyday every time and we are working on having more coverage.”
Translated by: Pedro Contreras and Sebastian Serrano
