Danielle Mackle nominated for Community Impact Prize
We are delighted to report that School of SSESW academic Danielle Mackle (Social Work) has been shortlisted for a University prize acknowledging excellence in Community Impact. Using funding awarded through her successful application to AHRC's 'Engaging the public with Census 2021' funding call, Danielle developed a very successful online campaign to engage the LGBTQ+ community in the Census.
Danielle commented: ‘The Proud to be Counted campaign was established to ensure LGBTQ+ individuals felt confident and able to declare their sexual orientation in the Census 2021. This was the first time that the Census asked a question on sexual orientation. The information is vital so that government, policy makers, funders and public sector agencies providing support and welfare services have accurate population data from all communities.
My research focuses on LGBTQ+ issues. Prior to this Census, there has not been any comprehensive or accurate national data on the numbers of people with an LGBTQ+ identity in the UK, yet research into the experiences of LGBTQ+ people show that they experience disproportionate levels of discrimination including, but not limited to, within health, education and employment. It is vital that government, policy makers and public sector agencies providing support and welfare services have accurate data in order to address the inequalities facing the LGBTQ+ population and to inform the prioritisation of resource allocation.
This project was completed in partnership with two Northern Ireland organisations: The Rainbow Project which promotes the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people and HERe NI which supports lesbian and bisexual women and their families. The Proud to be Counted project engaged with them to develop a social media campaign to target the LGBTQ+ community specifically, including videos featuring members of the LGBTQ+ community and two public engagement events where Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency staff (who host the NI Census) provided detailed information about engaging with the census, confidentiality etc.
The response from the LGBTQ+ community was excellent in terms of highlighting their concerns about declaring their sexual orientation and their reasons for engaging with the Census. This helped the Proud to be Counted team develop important messages for the campaign.
The voices from the LGBTQ+ community and sector were very powerful. Some of the videos touched on:
- The important fact that the Census is confidential.
- How to access an individual response code for those people not ‘out’ at home.
- The importance of government and service providers needing to know accurate numbers.
- LGBTQ+ people’s individual reasons for being proud to be counted.
The benefit of running an online social media campaign is that we were able to capture analytics from each of the social media platforms and, therefore, better understand the impact of the campaign. In March and April, the Proud to be Counted Twitter account posts earned 91.8k impressions, the videos on our Facebook page had 2,554 views, the website had 846 page views and the Instagram account posts had 472 likes.’
