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Joined by Tracey McAndrews, P3 Charity’s Head of Support and Community Services for the north of England, we explore why a genuine sense of belonging is not just vital to a healthy workplace, but fundamental to strong and compassionate leadership. In the context of LGBTQ+ History Month, our conversation reflects on the importance of creating inclusive spaces where everyone feels seen, valued and safe to be themselves, both at work and in their personal lives.
With P3 Charity since 2024, Tracey has decades of experience in housing support and homelessness prevention. Starting her career as an outreach worker back in 1998 – and working her way up to Head of Support and Community for P3 – Tracey has 28 years’ experience in the sector, with an inclusive approach and a commitment to community-led-support forming the foundation of her work.
Central to her approach is truly understanding people – something that happens through a non-judgemental and compassionate approach – and a huge part of her career has been advocating for LGBTQ+ people in supported housing.
Before joining P3, Tracey played a key role in a partnership between St Mungo’s and Stonewall Housing, which established the UK’s first pathway for LGBTQ+ people facing homelessness. Tracey explains: “We had one house that was specifically for trans people, accommodating them during different stages of their transition. Another property was specifically for LGBTQ+ people before anything else of this sort existed.
“I saw and had lots of conversations with people who had never had or experienced advocacy for them… When I worked with that service, it really opened my eyes to the wider need for us to grow as a sector. Though more needs to happen, there are a lot more services than there were back then for the [LGBTQ+] community.”
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community herself, Tracey is passionate about helping people find their voice as well as housing. On advocacy, Tracey says, “It’s something that began way before my professional career began – as early as childhood. I’ve always been so passionate about social justice, specifically advocating for LGBTQ+ people. So, it’s something that naturally came with the roles I’ve taken.”
Tracey continues, “As a member of the LGBTQ+ community and as someone in a senior leadership role, I’m very aware of how visibility and inclusion really matter. It’s not about forcing people into sharing their identity; it’s about letting people know that they can.”
“For me, being able to share my identity at work is absolutely crucial to me as a person, but also demonstrates to other people that being visual, being vocal about it really matters. As Head of Support and Community for the north of England, I cover Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Cheshire East and Yorkshire, which is a large percentage of the organisation, so I feel like I’m really in a position to have an impact.”
She adds, “In terms of my identity I haven’t always been out and open, particularly in relation to work. Historically I have always made sure I feel safe to be able to do so. I no longer do that because as I evolved, I’ve become more secure in my own identity.”
We talk about the challenges of not feeling safe in the workplace and why for Tracey, creating spaces for people in her teams to feel included is essential, not desirable.
Tracey emphasises,
[Belonging] lives in everyday actions and how decisions are made, whose voices are heard and whether people feel safe enough to come to work and [be themselves]. When it comes to talking about who we are, it’s the everyday conversations that take place that matter.
Talking about previous roles, Tracey says, “I used to describe it as ‘coming-out’. Every Monday, everybody will be talking about their weekend and when they don’t know you as a person, there is an assumption of heteronormality that everybody subconsciously refers to. I talk about my wife in the same way that other couples talk about their wives or husbands. It’s about normalising that conversation, but more importantly, it’s about feeling safe to be able to do that.”
As Tracey highlights the progress that workplaces have made to be inclusive of all people, she acknowledges the caveat that safe environments can only be created when we change the way people think about others. Despite workplaces’ efforts, stigma still exists if we can’t all be open about our identities.
“There is absolutely still stigma; we’d be foolish to pretend that there wasn’t. As somebody who is hypersensitive to body language, [I] can and do see it when people find out. For example, if people don’t know and I make reference to my wife, I can see the change. So, at work – an environment when you need to be your whole self – it’s so important that we can express ourselves. For me, it’s really important to get that conversation out of the way early on.”
Tracey acknowledges that this isn’t easy, especially for people who don’t feel safe or aren’t used to being open with their colleagues. Her advice: “Feel the fear and do it anyway. It is like a ‘coming-out’ process, but it gets easier the more you do it. Unfortunately, we are still in a situation where we have to ‘come out’. I hope one day we will live in a world where it’ll be normalised to talk about your partner, whoever they are.
It’s important for us as people to feel like we belong. I suppose as a leader I am hopefully embodying what that means and what that looks like in practice. The type of leadership somebody represents shows itself in what we tolerate, what we challenge and what we champion.
“When we talk about culture and values and what we stand for at P3 – linking that into LGBTQ+ History month – what conversations take place in the workplace and how we approach that creates a psychologically safe space where people can have conversations about things that matter to them, or conversations about things that they don’t understand. While it’s okay not to have a grasp of something, it’s how you approach that to enhance your understanding that matters.”
Beyond the workplace, Tracey talks about the Third Sector more broadly and why having these spaces of belonging are crucial to people’s wellbeing, particularly in the homeless community.
“The LGBTQ+ community is hugely overrepresented in the homeless sector, like many other marginalised communities. As a sector, we have a duty to continue to ask why that is and how we can address that. So having those spaces where [organisations] can learn from each other in terms of best practice, we are removing barriers for different communities across the country. Having those conversations enables us to continue to improve.”
Creating inclusive spaces for people to learn, listen and share their experiences is a vital part of that responsibility. Organisations can only come together if they are honest about their reflections on their practice, as it enables people with real experiences to challenge assumptions and help reframe ways of thinking.
By working collaboratively across the sector, we can better understand the systemic barriers faced by LGBTQ+ people and other marginalised communities, and work towards removing them. These conversations are not just about awareness: they are about accountability and action.
For many homeless LGBTQ+ people, experiences of homelessness or housing insecurity are closely linked to discrimination, family rejection and a lack of safe spaces, which significantly increase the risk of losing stable housing, particularly for young people. As we see every day at P3, the challenge of being homeless is often complicated by barriers to employment, healthcare and support services, leaving individuals with fewer safety nets to rely on. Understanding this correlation is essential if we’re to respond effectively, not only by addressing immediate housing needs, but by tackling the underlying inequalities that push LGBTQ+ people into homelessness in the first place.
We turn our attention towards LGBTQ+ History month and why remembering the past is just as important as celebrating identity during Pride.
Tracey says, “It’s important to recognise the progress that has been made, but also to be honest about the fact that acceptance doesn’t happen automatically, or everywhere. We’re able to have this conversation today because we’re fortunate enough to be in a country where it’s safe to have this conversation.
There are so many countries where so many people are not safe and where it’s not even legal [to be in a same-sex relationship] – people die. People die every day for having these conversations and that’s why it’s important that LGBTQ+ History Month still exists and continues to exist while it’s still needed, while it’s not normalised, while people continue to die because of who they are.
Tracey is keen to emphasise that LGBTQ+ History month is just as important for people who aren’t a part of the LGBTQ+ community. She says that we should all “stand up for what is right because it’s right, not because it matters to you [personally]. Simply because people matter.
“Everybody needs to stand up for people in minority groups who are punished because of who they are. Across the world, people don’t have the same level of rights as we do [in the UK]. The way that the world is – the way that it might be going – one day it might be any of us, for any reason, at any point.”
Tracey says that the way we respond to LGBTQ+ developments across the globe is relevant to how we respond to the people around us. She adds, “I’ve been fortunate enough to work in spaces where I can be myself. But that’s not the reality for everyone; it’s a reminder that visibility, safety and belonging matter. At P3, inclusion isn’t an add on: it’s about how we lead, how we listen and how make sure everyone feels heard, seen, respected and valued for whoever they are and whoever they happen to love.”
As one of the leaders on P3’s EDI Steering Committee, Tracey understands the importance of keeping inclusivity at the heart of our mission to tackle social exclusion. Since its inception in 2024, P3’s EDI Steering Committee – comprised of colleagues across P3 Charity’s senior leadership – has grown into a wider network of steering groups made up of P3 colleagues from all P3 regions across the country.
Tracey says, “The EDI Steering Group has changed a lot since we originally started with the committee. I’m now a part of the team who helps lead and guide the Steering Group; we want it to be very much led by the colleagues in our services.
“It’s grown and evolved since it started through lots of projects, such as psychological safety and P3’s EDI survey, which will guide our next steps for what [our colleagues] want [in terms of EDI policies, activities and inclusivity, rather than what we think they want.”
As much as her identity informs her personal decision making, Tracey is keen to say that the group is not led by her own biases, but by what the wider organisation needs. She says,
“There’s an assumption that the people in the Steering Group are a part of one [minority] group or another, and that just isn’t the case. As I’ve said LGBTQ+ rights absolutely matter to me because of my identity, but disability rights matter, Black rights matter… because people’s rights matter to me.
“I want the message that leads the EDI Steering Group to be around inclusion and whatever that looks like for people. It’s about what matters to the people that we work with and the discrimination that they may have faced because of who they are.”
For Tracey, just like P3 Charity, inclusivity goes beyond awareness days: it’s something that should be championed all year round. We end our conversation with a poignant message from Tracey: “We need to end the historical approach to EDI and focus on an inclusion that actually takes action into account. We don’t want it to be tokenistic; it’s a conversation that should be taking place all the time, not just once a year [to mark an awareness month]. We need to create spaces where these conversations can be had so people can express how certain things make them feel – because we don’t know what things feel like unless we talk about them.”
