Diversity Center of Oklahoma

Safe space

DISCOVERING A NEED FOR SERVICES FOR TRANS AND GENDER-DIVERSE PEOPLE, ONE OKLAHOMA CITY COUNSELOR HAS SPENT THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS CREATING A COMMUNITY-BASED SOLUTION.

By KM Bramlett

Early in their clinical work, licensed professional counselor Kelley Blair (they/them) realized that many medical and mental health clinicians are not adequately trained to provide appropriate care to the LGBTQ+ community. As a result, LGBTQ+ people often end up paying for sessions to educate their counselors and doctors about general LGBTQ+ issues before any real work can be done.

Blair — a Native American, TwoSpirit, transgender person — set about to correct this by founding the Diversity Center of Oklahoma, 2242 NW 39th St. The center connects gender-diverse and LGBTQ+ people to an array of mental health services and medical care. The clinicians and organizers who provide the services also belong to the LGBTQ+ community.

With the apparent need for better access to care in the LGBTQ+ community, Blair started going to OKC Pride meetings and reaching out to Native groups to look for clinicians who specialize in caring for these populations and couldn’t find anyone who did.

They ultimately joined the OKC Pride board and proposed giving a workshop to train heterosexual and cisgender therapists on how to work with gender-diverse/ LGBTQ+ people.

OKC Pride agreed to sponsor the event as a fundraiser for the Pride organization, and Blair began presenting this workshop once a year. It was through these workshops that the idea for the Diversity Center developed.

After the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, attendance at the workshop grew exponentially as the community began to realize the trauma that comes with being LGBTQ+.

Over time, Blair was often asked if they had a counseling center that supports LGBTQ+ people, and they realized the dire need for one. They applied for non-profit status that year and the center became its own entity.

Over the years since they opened, they’ve offered counseling, art programs, alternative spiritual development, support group meetings, a youth program, and housing assistance for unhoused people in the LGBTQ+ community. They’ve also hosted midwifery, insemination, and surrogacy services, which have since out-grown the space and established their own facilities.

The Diversity Center also has a partnership with Guiding Right, Inc., which offers support to HIVpositive people, performs HIV and STI testing, and other medical services. They also provide food assistance for people who are HIVpositive and food-insecure, provide access to PrEP (a medication for HIV prevention) and coordinate programs for tobacco use prevention and cessation.

Blair’s success with the center would not have been possible without some generous friends and neighbors along the way. In the early days of the center, Pastor Neill Coffman donated space to the Diversity Center in the Expressions Church (formerly on NW 39th Street). They remained in the donated space for about a year and a half, but once the center was financially viable, Blair decided it was the right time to start looking for a larger facility.

They found a space across the street from Expressions and formed a friendship with the owners of the 5,400 square-foot building. Once the owners learned that the space was going to be used for mental health services, they generously paid for all the remodeling (paint, flooring, moving walls, etc.) and in late 2017, more than 100 community members from as far as 100 miles away came to help do the work of remodeling.

Five years later, they have hopes of future expansion for the Diversity Center. Someday, they would like to open a shelter for trans people. Trans people are not usually permitted to use showers or other gender-specific areas in typical shelters. They also sometimes get turned away when their names don’t match their identification after transitioning.

“I worry about our geriatric gender-diverse folks,” Blair said.

They would also like to establish an assisted living center for trans and gender-diverse people who need a safe place to be themselves as they age, a place where they’ll be respected for who they are, and where they’ll be addressed with proper names and pronouns.

Anyone considering taking advantage of the current services at the Diversity Center is promised the highest level of respect and privacy.

“People like getting services from people who are like them, but sometimes there are concerns about privacy. They worry that everyone will know their business or assume things based on seeing their car in the parking lot. Because of these concerns, everyone at the Diversity Center is called a ‘community member,’ whether they’re there to accept services, provide services, or to volunteer,” Blair said.

They don’t use the labels “patient,” “client,” “volunteer,” etc., The goal is to normalize people’s presence at the center so that no one is judged based on why they are there.

“The Diversity Center of Oklahoma is a full social justice program,” Blair said.

Services are provided on a sliding-scale fee system, and many people are eligible. Anyone who is

Founder of the Diversity Center of Oklahoma, Kelley Blair (second from left), celebrates with fellow community members at the OKC Pride festival. Photo provided. “disenfranchised, marginalized, POC, LGBTQ+ folks and their families are welcome.” For the wider community, any local organizations or businesses who want gender-diverse/LGBTQ+ sensitivity training or need help updating their documents/forms, websites, or surveys with more inclusive language are welcome to reach out to the Diversity Center for guidance and consultation. They also continue to host their annual symposium where clinicians can earn continuing education credit while learning how to serve trans clients. The Diversity Center’s contributions have been recognized and awarded with a grant to provide support for those who have suffered intimate partner violence. “We just got a grant with the DA’s office and certification with the AG’s office to be the first Transgender/Gender Diverse & 2SLGBTQ+ organization in the state to offer [an] intimate partner violence program to our community. We are super excited about it and it is so needed too,” Blair said. To find more information about the Diversity Center of Oklahoma, to donate, or get involved, visit diversitycenterofoklahoma.org.