Speaking up and speaking out: Making services more inclusive through the voices of LGBTIQA+ lived experience

*Please note, the recording does not include the content covered in the workshop breakout rooms.

Organisations Involved: Switchboard & Beyond Blue
Workshop Facilitators: Anna Bernasochi (Switchboard) & Tamara Bezu (Beyond Blue)
Workshop Duration: 1.5 hours


Switchboard and Beyond Blue are working together to learn more about how LGBTIQA+ people with lived experiences of suicide engage with mainstream services. In this workshop, attendees were invited to reflect, discuss and collaborate to generate new understandings about what it is like for LGBTIQA+ people to access suicide prevention services and determine what can be done to help increase LGBTIQA+ cultural safety by mainstream providers.

Workshop Outcomes:

– Engaged the perspectives and voices of LGBTIQA+ people with lived experiences to learn about the barriers to accessing mainstream suicide prevention services
– Provided a LGBTIQA+ peer-led space to increase representation and inclusion of LGBTIQA+ people at the LE Summit
– Learned from and with LGBTIQA+ people to produce key take away learnings to help increase inclusion of LGBTIQA+ people in Beyond Blue services
– Broadened Switchboard’s networks and support toward LGBTIQA+ people with lived experience

Participants were invited to continue their lived experience engagement by joining Switchboard and Beyond Blue’s lived experience networks and maintain connection with a national LGBTIQA+ lived experience group.

About the Facilitators

Anna Bernasochi: Anna (she/her) is a community champion striving to put LGBTIQA+ suicide prevention on the national agenda. Proudly bisexual, Anna leads Switchboard Victoria’s suicide prevention program. She is a powerful voice, advocate, lived experience representative and recognised as an influential emerging leader in the mental health and suicide prevention sectors. Anna delights in sipping green tea, origami folding and co-parenting a boisterous young greyhound.

Tamara Bezu: Tamara (she/her) is a social worker and Adviser for The Way Back, Beyond Blue’s national suicide aftercare initiative providing practical support to people following a suicide attempt or crisis. Tamara has experience leading LGBTQIA+ suicide prevention and inclusion projects on a local, state and national scale. Tamara identifies as bisexual/pansexual and has drawn strength in her own mental health journey from her LGBTIQA+ peers. She loves library books and salted liquorice, and has an irrational fear of sinkholes.

Categories
Information
Date Published
March 14, 2022
Topics
LE SUMMIT 21 , LGBTIQA+ , workshop
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