client factfile for social action

1. Name: Alice Rose
*

2. The client: Stonewall Equality Limited
Overview of the client.
Who are they, when did they start, why did they start, what do they do, how are
they funded?
Stonewall is named after the Stonewall Inn of the Stonewall riots in New York’s
Greenwich Village. They are the largest LGBT rights organisation in Europe and
started in 1989 by lobbying against section 28 of the Local Government Act which
was a piece of legislation which aimed to ban the promotion of homosexuality and
promoting the teaching in schools of the acceptability of homosexuality. It was
repealed in Scotland in 2000 and in the rest of the UK in 2003. They mostly lobby
for policy development in regards to LGBT rights and are based in London but
have offices in Edinburgh and Wales. Stonewall is a charity and a NGO (non-
governmental organisation), they receive no government funding and therefore
relies on donations, sponsorships and fundraising events.

3. The issues:
Your client might advocate on a number of different yet related issues.
What issues your client campaign on? LGBT rights.
What are some of the impacts they have managed to achieve? They first managed
to repeal section 28 of the Local Government Act (2003), they got anti-gay hate
crimes recognised through the Criminal Justice Act (2003), they managed to get
the Civil Partnership Act (2004) put into force which gives gay and lesbian couple
a legal framework equivalent to a civil marriage. They got the 2007 Sexual
Orientation Regulations which protects against discrimination on the grounds of
sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services through the Equality Act
2006. They also managed to introduce an offence of incitement to homophobic
hatred in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 which matched existing
protections around race and religion. They challenged the unequal age of consent
laws and the ban on homosexual people in the armed forces and succeeded. They
launched a campaign that ran with the slogan “Some people are gay. Get over it!”

4. The issues:
What are they still hoping to achieve?
Their current work includes their Diversity Champions programme which is for
major employers. Such employers include American Express, Royal Mail, Royal Air
Force, MI5 and the British Army. They have launched the Education for All
programme which tackles homophobia in schools which is still running, they are
also researching homophobic hate crime, lesbian health and homophobia in
football. They also put on events such as the Stonewall Equality Dinner, Summer
Party and the Brighton Equality Walk.

5. Facts and figures:
Use this space to highlight key facts and figures related to your client and the
social issue you are trying to tackle. These could be very useful later on in your
project as you try to raise awareness.
• 99% of young gay people still hear homophobic language at school.
• More than half (55 per cent) of lesbian, gay and bisexual young people
experience homophobic bullying in Britain’s schools.
• Three in five gay pupils who experience homophobic bullying say that teachers
who witness the bullying never intervene.
• More than two in five (44%) lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils who experience
homophobic bullying skip school because of it, one in seven (13%) skip school
more than six times.
• More than half (56%) of gay young people deliberately harm themselves, which
can include cutting or burning themselves. NSPCC estimates that between 1 in
15 and 1 in 10 young people in general deliberately harm themselves.
• In the last year, 27% of gay men thought about taking their own life even if
they would not do it. This rises to 35% of black and minority ethnic men, 38% of
bisexual men and 47% of gay and bisexual men with a disability. Just 4% of men
in general thought about taking their own life in the last year.