A GROUP which champions the rights of young lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Yate and Chipping Sodbury is facing closure just a year after opening.

The monthly event for 13- to 19-year-olds who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or questioning (LGBTQ) is held at the Armadillo youth café in Yate and provides a lifeline to teenagers struggling to find acceptance in wider society.

The open night, on the last Sunday of every month, is the only event of its kind in South Gloucestershire and has grown from just a handful of members when it opened in April 2015 to a following of 60 online and a core group of 12.

Funding from South Gloucestershire Council will stop in September, leaving the group on the verge of having to close down.

Fern Burgess, 17, who attended the first session, told the Gazette: “When I first went it was just me, two straight friends I had taken along and one other. I didn’t know anybody but now I have 12 new friends and as I don’t have many friends in the LGBT community, that is really important.

“We are so close, like a little family, and the group, discussions and activities are completely fitting and suited to our age.”

The Yate teenager, who previously volunteered at Brimsham Green School’s youth group, added: “It has been such an important place for me and I look forward to it every month. When it’s not on during the holidays it feels like a part of me is missing.

“To hear it might be closed is really upsetting.”

Youth worker Jayden Boulton, 21, said: “There is nothing else like this in Yate and most members are from the Yate and Sodbury area and surrounding villages.

“Each month we see a new face and that is because they can meet new people going through similar issues. One of our members is trans and is Continued on page 3 (Continued from page 1) right at the beginning of the process and looks up to me because I have been through the transition myself and can offer help and advice. “Our members are upset, they have found a place they can come and be themselves and meet other people like them.”

The group is run by the Diversity Trust with funding from SGC’s now axed area forums.

Director Berkeley Wilde said: “Our funding will finish in September 2016 which means a project that opened in April 2015 will have to close in September this year.”

He said young LGBTQ people were 80 times more likely to self-harm or self-injure and they desperately needed support.

“The mental health figures are much higher for this group of people,” he said. “It is really important we have specialist services.

“This is the only project in South Gloucestershire and it is a very much needed resource. It is vital that funding continues and the support and services continue.”

Cllr Ian Boulton (Lab, Staple Hill) said: “It is a vital service that is offered and I want to remind councillors in South Gloucestershire of our own recent survey which demonstrated our own LGBT people are particularly vulnerable.

“They are isolated in South Gloucestershire and although this service is based in Yate, it serves the whole of South Gloucestershire.”

South Gloucestershire Council said it would meet with the trust on September 13 to discuss future options.