Advice and understanding

Switchboard provides a one-stop listening service for LGBT+ people on the phone, by email and through Instant Messaging. Find out more here.

Switchboard has been listening to callers since 1974. Help us listen to many more by supporting us here.

Do you think you can provide calm words when they’re needed most? If so, we’d like to hear from you. Find out more about volunteering with Switchboard here.

Take a look at Switchboard’s latest Listen Up! Report, which provides anonymous data from our conversation reports as well as reflections from some of our dedicated volunteers. The insights in Listen Up! are anonymized but contribute significantly to our understanding of the LGBTQIA+ communities in the UK; what they are exploring, worried about, seeking to understand and fighting for. The report also highlights the invaluable impact of the Switchboard service for these communities, which continues to be as vital now as it has ever been.

To help us celebrate our 50th anniversary, we’re launching a poetry competition and calling for submissions around the theme of “A poem for Switchboard”.

Switchboard the national LGBT+ helpline have announced their new free 0800 phone number, making their mission to offer calm words when people need them most, more accessible than ever.

1st December 2022 – Switchboard LGBT+ Helpline, the leading LGBT+ helpline in the UK founded in 1974, announced today that Stephanie Fuller has been appointed CEO. Stephanie will be stepping into the role as CEO, from her previous role of General Manager at Switchboard.

In August 2022, we released our first ever impact report, Listen Up. Every conversation at Switchboard helps to give a greater understanding of what is happening to LGBTQIA+ people in the UK. The report, will not only provide an insight into what the organisation achieved in 2021, but also reflect on how the unexpected events of 2020 affected the communities they support, and the ways they run their service.

Safe Space is Switchboard’s new, UK-wide awareness campaign launched at Pride in London 2019. With recent figures showing a doubling of LGBT+ hate crime in just five years, this initiative will reach those affected by isolation, low representation and hate crime in towns and cities across the UK – and you can help us!