Just A Ball Game? Annual Award 2018 – Merseyside Police

On November 9th 2018 here at Just A Ball Game? we will be celebrating our eighth birthday and ahead of this we are very pleased to announce that our Challenging Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia Award this year has gone to Merseyside Police.

Over the past twelve months we have teamed up with the North West force for a number of LGBTQ+ inclusion meetings, presentations and events and also looked at ways for them to integrate our resources in to their officer briefings and training.

Here at JBG? we use football and other sports as a tool to help educate around LGBTQ+ visibility and inclusion alongside challenging HBT abuse and behaviour and this has helped inspire the constabulary to look at new ways of communicating and reaching out to the local community in the hope in turn members of the public will engage and trust officers more to deal with hate crime when it is reported.

JBG? now hope that other police forces across the country will now also look to partnering with the LGBTQ+ campaign organisation and team up to do similar work.

The award presentation was made to the Merseyside Police Community Engagement Unit who were grateful and proud to receive an acknowledgement of the newly formed partnership working with JBG? Inspector John Sacker said, «Today, Merseyside Police are very pleased to be presented with an award from Lindsay England, founder of Just A Ball Game? for their engagement and collaboration during 2018».