 Hello. Welcome to Queer Wobbery webinar number two. My name is Damian Bonson. I'm the founder of Black Rainbow. Thank you all for joining us and those are coming back for our second part of our series. Queer Wobbery is a series of First Nation lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, non-binary and sister girl and brother boy workers who are doing that work for our community. Black Rainbow have created this in partnership with the mental health professionals network to bring this information to you all. Our first webinar was on our study, Black Rainbow study on the COVID-19 and the impact on our community. Today, we're speaking with Professor Braden Hill and Dr. Beppe Ewing about the research project. I'd also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands that we're all on today. I'm coming to you from Alice Springs. I'm in my car. I've been an hour stuck in traffic, so apologies for the dodgy laptop movement. But without further ado, we'll get underway. Thanks very much for joining us. Damian and welcome to everyone who's joining us today and also people who are going to be viewing this on recording. I'm Damian Ricks and I'm facilitating today's session. I am a professor in psychology at Fender's University and I'm also a psychotherapist who works in private practice with trans young people. I'd like to introduce our panel. Obviously, you've just met Damian Bonson. I'd now like to introduce Braden. Braden, would you like to share a little bit about yourself, please? I am a Nga Nandiman from the southwest of Western Australia. And I'm the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Students, Equity and Indigenous at Edith Cowan University. And I'm really, really grateful to be here with you all today. Thanks, Braden. Beth, would you like to introduce yourself, please? Thanks, Damian. My name is Beth Ewing. I am a Nga Nandiman from Perth WA and Senior Research Fellow at Kulbadi Aboriginal Centre at Murdoch University and was one of the investigators on this project. Thanks, Beth. And we should have the next slide, please, I think. So, this webinar, as Damian outlined, is a unique collaboration between Black Rainbow and Mental Health Professionals Network and hopefully you did join us for the last one. We've even got even more people registered for this one, which is wonderful. Next slide, please. So, that was our panel. You've just seen us all. We're a slide behind. But that's all of our lovely faces and that's what we'll be talking to you today. Next slide, please. So, these are our learning outcomes that you've probably already had in an email. So, clearly the main focus today is for Braden and Beth to talk about the findings of their project, Breaking the Silence. And really, we want you to take away some really practical information about what it means to be working with people in these diverse communities. Next slide, please. So, I'll hand it over, Braden, now, to introduce his team who are involved in conducting this research. Thanks very much, Damian. You see the team in front of you. It's a majority Indigenous queer-led team, which I think is really important. Beth's our amazing queer ally. And Dr Jenny Dodd is also our representative sample from the straight white community. So, she was a wonderful co-researcher. Damian, as mentioned, was part of the project. We have colleagues who aren't with us today, Shan Bennett from Edith Cowan University, but also Dr Emery Eads from Curtin University. So, a wonderful team that I produced a great piece of work from a really kind of small piece of research funding. So, we're really grateful to be able to talk to you about it today. Next slide, please. So, for us, it was really important that this project, because not a lot of this had been done before, it was really important to us that we were able to design this in collaboration with community, but also with organisations that work with Indigenous queer mob. And so, a strange quirk about ethics process was that the ethics committee that we went through really encouraged us to go first to the organisations, as opposed to the community, which is an interesting flip on the way we probably would have approached it ourselves. But it was a useful piece in that we were able to talk to elders, to members of the LGBTQA plus community, people working in organisations to help shape what the research project should be doing and what it should be focusing on. And one of the things that came out of that really clearly was that they wanted this to be a WA centric piece of research. They weren't interested in looking more broadly, largely because there was a sense that we needed to start small and focus on the particular nuances of WA. So, we really honoured that in order to make sure that we were making sure that the research was useful to the people who would operationalise really some of the findings. We partnered with a number of organisations, Aboriginal Health Services in Western Australia, as well as university student support services, to really think about what are the questions we should be asking, and how we can make sure that the project is going to be useful to the communities that we're seeking to serve. So, you can see some of them there, one joining Aboriginal Corporation, we worked with Yorgam Aboriginal Service, SHQ, Moorish Court who are in the South Southern Corridor of Western Australia. So, they were our partners at the beginning of the research and they were partners all the way through. So, next slide please. So, in terms of how we did the research, we really started with a survey of WA health and education service providers, primarily health service providers. So, we had 206 responses from individual health professionals across the state. We'll break that down a little bit later on for you. We then followed up with five focus groups involving 49 participants where we really sought to interrogate some of the stuff that we found in the surveys to really deepen our understanding of what we were seeing there. And then we conducted five unstructured interviews with individuals who felt like they wanted to share their viewpoint in a space where it wasn't in relation to their colleagues and that was interesting in and of itself but I think that's worthwhile calling out. That was the first phase of the research, the second phase was then looking at community and we conducted an online survey that went out to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community here at LGBTQ plus community living in Western Australia and you can see the responses there. Thanks, next slide. So, going to talk you through the first phase of the research which was with the research with staff in organisations that are working to service the queer Indigenous community in Western Australia. Next slide. In terms of those who responded to the survey that I mentioned earlier, many of the people who were responding were mental health professionals. So, you can see Councilor Psychologist Clint Sykes came out as being quite a predominant group in terms of their responses to the survey followed by nurses, educators and trainers etc. So, this gives you a decent idea of those who were responding. I think interestingly you won't see it in our slides but in our report many of the people who were in the space were Aboriginal themselves and or part of the queer community. So, it's a really strong evidence base I think from the insights that we received. So, thanks. Next slide. So, really in short, so in the conversations that we had with the organisations these are some of the key findings that I think are really worth highlighting. So, one of the clear things that came out was that employing and retaining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander queer staff was really important to those working in the organisations. One of the things that I found quite interesting is that visible signs and symbols were seen as being really important. Whilst we might think of these things as being quite trivial, they really did mean a lot for the people who were working in these services who observed client behaviour and willingness to engage in the services. Of course, mandatory professional development was always there. There was also a lot of conversation around safe referral and understood referral pathways for trans and gender diverse people. That's a particularly broader problem in Western Australia and I think an interesting finding was the sense that we really needed to have inclusive organisational conversations with boards and executives about how we do this work well. They can be extreme enablers but they can also be considerable obstacles. So, that was a really key finding that came out from that. Next slide, please. So, when we said to organisations in Western Australia working with Aboriginal queer community, we said, well, what are the sorts of resources or what sorts of things do you need to work well with this community? And a lot of people pointed to just needing more information, updated resource, and of course remembering that there's not a huge evidence base around Indigenous queer lived experience, even in relation to health, that there's this thirst or need to have more information. One of the things that came out as well is making sure that we have inclusive data collection in our organisation. So, some staff were saying things like, I can't go to my CEO and tell them why this is important because I just don't have the data to back up the arguments. And this came out really clearly in terms of client intake forms, etc. Then it was really important that we had policies that backed up some of the work that we're doing around inclusion more broadly than just the bullying and harassment stuff. There was a really concerted suggestion that we have inclusion around queer inclusion, if you like, and of course greater representation and visibility within community was always helpful. So, those were some of the key things the organisations were telling us. I'll just move to the next slide now for the next phase of the research. So, the first phase, as I mentioned, focused on organisations. We then went to community to find out what they thought. And so, the primary way in which we did that was through an online survey, primarily using social media. So, I'll just talk through some of our findings there. So, next slide please. So, in terms of who responded to our survey, you can see some of the demographics there. I think interestingly, less than 2% identified as trans or brother boy, sister girl, and but when you'll see that 19% indicated the gender was different to that it signed at birth, it does throw up an interesting point that we probably need to think through. And I think BEP has some insights on that one. And it's probably worth pointing out as well that the majority of the respondents lived in the metro area and were under the age of 30. So, that's one of the limitations of the study. But BEP, I don't know if you wanted to just talk about that one quickly. Yeah, I think our finding that people didn't necessarily kick the box to say they were trans, brother boy or sister girl is interesting in terms of the language we use going forward. In our national survey of youth, we also found brother boy, sister girl was not a commonly used term at all. I think it's very community specific. So, I think a really solid way of asking around trans status is asking people if they were, if they are a gender that was different to that assigned at birth. Thanks very much, BEP. Next slide. Me anyway. So, in terms of where people are going for emotional support, when we asked people within their family networks who they were going to for support, the majority said they were going to their mothers or their siblings. And then when we asked around people outside of family, there was a fairly even amount that went to LGBT friends or non-LGBT friends. In terms of formal support, which I assume most of the audience is interested in working in the mental health space, it was really clear that people were going to psychologists, GPs and clinical psychologists for support. So, 60% of the samples said they would go to one of those health practitioners. Only 50%, only half of the samples said that they would go to someone who was Aboriginal and LGBT. So, it's important to note that having someone with that same lived experience is not necessarily what people are looking for. We also had 50% of the samples saying that they went to the emergency department. So, it's really interesting to think about whether our emergency department staff are adequately trained to meet the needs of LGBT more. And we also had relatively high use of online services, although satisfaction with those services varied across the type of service. It would be lovely to hear a little bit more about what online services people were accessing. Sure, yeah. The majority of people who did go to a service went to Beyond Blue, so that seemed to be the website that people were going to access mental health support. Other than that, we found fairly low use of other lifeline type services or online information. Next slide, please. So, we asked a lot about people's daily experiences going about through life. And there's some interesting take-homes from this one. 73% of people had experienced discrimination daily based on their sexuality, which was really concerning. 12% had been a victim of assault. 12% had experienced housing insecurity. And in our qualitative open-ended questions, over half of the sample mentioned racism as some form of discrimination. This really points to the experiences of racism and harassment that LGBT mob are facing. I'll just point out with the 12% as victims of assault there. We asked that around general, going about life, whether you're assaulted. But when we asked about interpersonal violence, 65% of the sample had experienced interpersonal violence from a partner or a family member. And it was most likely they had experienced that violence from multiple people in their community. Next slide, please. Of course, we were interested in people's well-being. We used the growth empowerment measure in a peace subscale to assess people's well-being. Overall, there were moderate levels of well-being in the sample, so not too high, not too low. In terms of what was predicting that well-being, comfort and being asked about your LGBT identity by a service provider predicted higher well-being. So the more comfortable people felt talking about that with a service provider, the higher their well-being was. But understandably, experiences of heterosexism and transphobia by Aboriginal community members was significantly linked to lower well-being. Next slide, please. Thanks, Bep. In terms of some of the other interrogation we did with the community was looking at their sense of connection to the queer community within Western Australia. Concerningly, less than half stated that they felt a sense of belonging in the broader queer community here in Western Australia. And kind of backing up what Bep said, 40% had experienced some form of microaggression from non-Indigenous queers within the last 12 months. That need to educate is something that people certainly felt burdened with within that community. And of course, we see that more than half had the experience of being a token Aboriginal person in an organisation, particularly in queer spaces. So some interesting things for us to think about in terms of the ways in which we build allyship within the queer communities around matters such as racism. Next slide. Sorry, David. Breton and Bep, I'd be lovely to hear. I know we spoke previously about those microaggressions. Bep mentioned about sexual racism. It'd be wonderful here to be a bit more about that. Yeah, definitely. We had two questions, particularly around sexual racism. So 18% of the samples said they'd been treated as seen as exotic because of their aboriginality by a potential dating partner, whereas 21% said that they had been rejected because of their aboriginality. But it is interesting to note when we asked particularly about online dating apps, 41% said they didn't disclose their aboriginality. So it may be that people are underreporting discrimination that they're at risk of because they're actually just not telling potential partners that they're aboriginal. Thanks, Bep. That's really important. I think something for us to keep unpacking that, you know, the gap between disclosure, we know, certainly from the literature on black trans people, for example, that when people disclose, it can result in things like positive interactions, but can also lead people open to greater amounts of discrimination. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Bep. Thanks, Damien. So when we asked respondents as well about their connections within the aboriginal Torres Strait Islander community within WA, the unfortunate thing is a majority feared some form of discrimination from, because of their sexuality or gender identity, from within the aboriginal community. So it's a perception that they weren't going to be accepted. And worryingly, a third felt that they, because of who they are, they were entirely invisible within their community, which is something that we do worry about. And this kind of corresponds to some of the stuff that you can see on the slide. But one of the things that wasn't a surprise, but is one that we really wanted to, I'll talk through later on, was that feeling of acceptance from elders and community leaders. There were quite a few people who did not feel as though they were accepted. It certainly wasn't overwhelmingly high, but it was something in a lot of the discourse with organizations that came out clearly this presumption that elders were oppositional to queer inclusive kind of thinking. So I think that's some of the interesting findings to interrogate here as well. Can I just ask a question? When you said earlier that the ethics committee sort of suggested starting with elders and organizations, and you spoke to elders, yeah? What did elders say about their acceptance of queer mob? So it was interesting when we first started, it was a small group of elders that were part of our university community, if you like, that we really kind of leaned on. It wasn't until the back end of the research when we were presenting back the findings that we really got a significant dialogue with them about queer inclusion really in the community. And I talk about that later on in the slide so you'll see some of the commentary that comes out of there. But it was really interesting just on that. We called this breaking the silence because a lot of communities felt like it was a silence that wasn't being spoken about. But I think because of the great work of organizations like Black Rainbow, over the years of doing this research, I think we started to observe an openness and changing in the dialogue that we saw at the end of the project. So I'll talk through some of that, but it's a good question, Damien. Thanks. Next slide please. So of course, we wanted to make sure that we captured from the community participants what were the best things about being Indigenous and queer. And I think I resonated a lot with this as somebody who comes from the community. But I think the idea that you have ability to change hearts and minds in family and community and broader society was something that came out really strongly. A lot of the participants pointed to in the qualitative comments, feeling like they can mentor people through their journey, having learned from what they've gone through and navigating that within various cultural contexts. And a lot of people talked about the ability of being able to transverse and transgress across different communities and why that was important to them as well. Next slide. So as Damien mentioned, we did do a piece of work around yarning with the Elders Group. So you can see a number of our Elders there. Most of them are no longer, but not all with some of the research team there. I guess the key messages that came out of that was that education was important. Community-based education was important. Dialogue with family and communities about it was exceptionally vital. You can see some of the commentary there that's come directly from the Elders themselves. And I must admit, this is probably the first time that I can recall ever having a conversation with a bunch of people, most of whom are my Elders, about queerness. And I must admit, it was probably the most rewarding and inspiring part of the research project because I too, like our participants, had a sense that there would be a reluctance or a hesitation to embrace inclusion. But as you can see in some of the commentary there, it was really well embraced. And you can see my grandmother on the far right there who was also very much part of the story too. So you can see that the presumption of Elders being oppositional is something we probably need to think through. And it's probably very community specific. Next slide. Okay, thanks, Braden. So we wanted to provide the audience some insight on how you can integrate these findings into your daily practice. And I think there's a few take home messages. So it's important to understand people's intersecting identities and how this can present in health outcomes in ways that are challenging, but also empowering as we saw from comments on what is great about being Aboriginal and queer. Now, the finding that people are likely to go to their GP or psychologist means that you are probably seeing Aboriginal LGBT people as your clients, even if you're not aware of that. So we need to practice as if they are present. I think we would love to hear more about that idea of practice as if they are present. What sort of does that look like for you? Yeah. So I think every day in our sessions and our work with people, it's not assuming people hetero, not assuming people are white and not putting questions forward. For example, your husband, your wife, not assuming that, not assuming people's culture. And going to the next point here around discrimination, something I'm particularly passionate about is as therapists and GPs being comfortable with talking about discrimination and racism and being comfortable to be interrogated around how you are going to work with that in session by someone and also not assuming that someone, if they may not look visibly Aboriginal, quote unquote, that they're not experiencing the impacts of discrimination and likewise for the queer community. If someone doesn't read as queer to you, it's not for you to assume they're not experiencing negative discrimination. I think so it is important to understand the realities of people's lived experience and discrimination that is structural and interpersonal. And I think it's important, as Braden was saying around the elders, in general, we can't make assumptions that there is going to be community resistance or support for Aboriginal LGBT people in either of the communities. We have to really figure out what's going on in the communities that we work with. And helping people find supportive networks within their communities is a huge part of our job as practitioners, I believe. And sometimes it might be upon you to go out into communities and figure out who the support people are that you can link your patients in with. Thanks, Liza. So it's lovely, actually, because I do quite a lot of these with MHPN and often we don't run as well to time, but we've actually been very timely today. Thank you to Braden and Bet for really talking us through so clearly the findings and breaking the silence. And of course, that means that we've got actually more time than we had planned for for our Q&A. So if you haven't already posted a question, please click on the three dots down the bottom right hand side of your screen and pose a question that you'd like us to answer. And Damien's available here. Damien Bodson is also available here to engage as well as Braden and Bet. But we've got some questions, obviously, you were all able to share questions ahead of the event. And so we've got some questions here already for Bet and Braden to respond to. So we might start with those as the live questions start rolling in. So I've got one for Braden, which is how do we address the lack of safe and inclusive services for First Nations Queer Mob who live in remote communities? Yeah, look, I think it's a really great question. I think the broader, more fundamental question is how do we address really poor health service provision in rural remote areas generally? I think one of the things that we need to really understand is, you know, we need to understand if this is a genuine issue. I think what we found in our research is that inclusion varied quite significantly, even within metro areas around organization provision. So I think it's important to understand the nature of the problem. I think where you see in any organization, wherever geographically it might be, if it exists, leadership governance and the culture of the organization are really critical around queer inclusion and making sure that they are safe spaces for people to operate in. I think to assume geography then means lack of safety is probably something we'd have to interrogate a little bit further. But where we see the signs of success around inclusion, it kind of really holds for any organization where there's invisible presence around queerness and there's an embracing of aboriginal queerness that's proactive, where we have policies and intake data that helps inform practice, those sorts of things that exist in any organization would hold for any region, I believe. But we probably need to do a little bit more work to interrogate this, but one organization can be fantastic at one moment and then you have a change of staff and then it's not. So I think it's about how do you put those sustaining structures in place to make sure it's a matter of fact business as usual expectation of health service provision. Thanks, Brad, and that's a great answer. Kelly has asked in the live question, are we going to get a copy of the slides? Yes, Kelly, they are actually available to you right now. If you click the three dots down the bottom right hand side of your screen, the slides will be there now. I've got another question for Bepp this time. What's one thing that queer or queer events and community can do to contribute? I have friends who throw queer events and they're usually so wiped and as a person of color myself, it doesn't always feel inclusive or like it's our space. Sure. Yeah, that's definitely something we hear from community as well. Look, I think there's genuine inclusion that can happen. So thinking about if you are throwing a Pride event, for example, it's our Pride Month here in WA. So this is a kind of topical issue for us. Thinking about what role can Aboriginal people play? So if you're having panels, are you including people of color or Aboriginal people? Are you getting them to come and speak? Are you having welcomes to country? Are you acknowledging the country that you're on? There is so much rich Aboriginal queer history, particularly in the activism space that can be celebrated. And so it's reaching out to communities and forming those networks and relationships to actually hear about how they want to be included in events. And we can all start doing that, I think. So Bepp I might keep you on the line. Can I throw a live question to you? Sure. What do you feel the prerequisites are for an organization to genuinely use symbols such as Pride Flags to show a safe and inclusive organization? Yeah, it's a great question. I'm not sure if it's a prerequisite because I actually think symbols is one of the first things I recommend services do. So get your flags and start putting them out there. But I think there needs to be some level of queer inclusion and Aboriginal cultural safety training to go with. So us having a staff discussion around, we're going to put these symbols out because we want people to feel welcome when they walk in the door or visit our service online. And so what does that actually mean for us as a service? Does that mean that we all are going to be on board with using pronouns? Does that mean that we are not going to bring any negative assumptions to our work? Does it mean that we need to go and find some additional training or speak to people in the community that can inform us on this population? So I think it can be a really good first step, but it has to be backed up with that commitment to further learning. Thanks Bepp. Braden, I've got a couple of live questions that have come in that I think I'll throw to you that sort of go together. So Shannon has asked, why do you think only 50% of respondents wanted to see a practitioner with a similar identity to them? And Steph has asked, wasn't sure if they've missed it or not, but how big was the community sample size for the survey? Thanks Damien. On the first one, I think that surprised me if I'm honest. I mean, for me, I would jump at the chance to see a mental health professional who is Indigenous and queer, but I think when you think about Aboriginal identity, the journey that people go on in terms of understanding their own sense of self and cultural self, it might be quite challenging if we presume that all Indigenous clients want to see an Indigenous support worker, if you like, or psychologist or whatever it may be. So I think it's probably similar to the broader population. There's also, I think as Bepp talked about before, there are kind of differing expectations dependent on individual circumstances around what they want to get out of therapy or what they want to get out of their health service kind of needs. And I think it is highly individual, but still 50% isn't insignificant. I think that's still something to pay attention to and think about for sure. On the sample size question, Bepp, I might ask you if you don't mind, because I know you did some thinking about this one. I'll throw to you if that's okay. Yeah, 63 responses from the community survey. Thanks Bepp. And I'll throw, again, two questions out to both of you and you might choose who wants to answer because they're sort of paired questions. So Kathy's asked a lot of the research participants who are in metro areas. What did you sort of do to reach out to remote communities? And Patricia has asked, do you think there is because of that sort of large metro component? Is there differences between remote and regional experiences? So I might jump in quickly if that's all right. Look, I think we were severely limited by the small nature of the project. I think it's one thing. Usually these sorts of projects, be given funding to be able to travel and really make sure that you're able to build those relationships. But this was very much a kind of first of its kind seed funding. So we're talking less than $60,000 to kind of make this happen, which sounds like a lot, but it doesn't go very far. It's why we opted for the online kind of way of working to try and capture as many views as we could. So I think in terms of the nuance around regional and metro, there were some, but I think it's an area that we most certainly need to explore further. Beb, I don't know if you wanted to add, given some of the work you're doing with walking culture? Yeah, to be fair, when we do go a little bit, well, we have a lot more scope in our national work. We're not seeing too many regional differences. And I think that might be how region is coded in national surveys. Honestly, talking with people across Australia, it's so community specific. And so if you're a particular community, whether that be the Noongar community in urban Perth, or a particular community in a remote location, it's very insular in terms of what is talked about and what is accepted and what is celebrated. And I don't think the ABS codes, for example, around regionality and morality and remoteness capture that necessarily. But I will flag also, we know that the majority of Aboriginal people in Australia do live in urban settings. So it is really important to have findings for people living in the metro area. Thanks, Beb. Thanks, Braden. I just want to signal to everyone, we've got about 15 minutes or so left for questions. We're having a lot of questions coming in on the live, which is fantastic. And we have only gone through two of the ones that we were given ahead of time. So I just want to signal we're not going to be able to answer everyone's question, but we'll do the best we can. So we have a question from Alastair, who's a Wurundjeri brother boy. And a similar question came through ahead of time, which I think Beb was going to speak to. As researchers working with community, do you have advice for keeping ourselves and each other in the community you work with, safe and affirmed? Yeah, it's a really fantastic question. So I'm not a queer person, but I can speak from keeping safe as an Aboriginal person. Honestly, this project is the first project I've worked on where Aboriginal queer people are the majority investigators. And I can tell you it just makes it lovely. It makes it so easy to bring back and debrief issues with the team and talk about is this what we're comfortable with? Is this what we're are we reading things correctly, this kind of thing? So I actually think having Aboriginal and if it's a queer topic, Aboriginal queer leadership in projects and majority leadership in projects is the way to go. And Braden touched on relationships earlier. And so having having opportunities to talk to communities and making sure you're going out and talking with partners routinely and just checking in with them is a really nice way to check how the project's going, how you're going, if everyone's feeling safe, and comfortable and just taking from them, taking advice from them. Thanks, Bepp. So Jones asked in the acronym that we've been using throughout and as in queer robbery, what does SB stand at the end? It stands for Sister Girls and Brother Boys, which is Bepp spoke about earlier as being sort of maybe applicable to some communities, but actually didn't have really wide uptake within this particular survey. And then in the chat, Kai has asked a question, were there any particular themes you noticed among trans and gender diverse respondents, whether in terms of support or discrimination? Yep. So I think broadly, it kind of follows trends in research that we see elsewhere, where transgender diverse communities within communities, certainly feel that sense of discrimination, that sense of isolation, they experience that on a much more frequent basis. And that wasn't dissimilar to the sample that we saw here. Again, not a huge sample. But I think when you looked at the organizational findings, as we said, there's a really clear view in Western Australia that a lot of mental health professionals do not know where they should be referring transgender diverse clients. And I think that's kind of backed up by what we've seen in our study. Bepp, I don't know if you wanted to add anything there. Yeah, just echoing that in the larger research we're doing as well, not always, but if there are differences in services experiences, it's usually along between trans and cisgendered people with trans people generally having worse experiences, feeling worse, feeling less included in either community. And look, there's a huge piece of work to do with elders and our services around talking around gender and gender diversity. Because talking with elders is they're generally okay and pretty conversant talking around sexuality. And so our next kind of piece of work and advocacy, I think, is around that gender diversity piece as well. Yeah, and that's most certainly what the elders were calling out for in terms of education, they wanted to know more, to be able to talk about it in a more proactive and sensitive way. So that was a self-reflected kind of need from our elders group as well. Thanks, Maiden and Bepp. We've had a couple of questions come in around language, which I think are quite interesting. So both Zane and Sissy have asked questions about is it okay to use words such as queer and mob in a clinical setting? And also, from the research, what kind of words or language do people seem to be using to describe their sexuality and their gender? If, as you mentioned before, Bepp, sister goes and brother boys wasn't particularly a common term that people identified with? Yeah, so I think being able to, the relationships are really important in understanding the ways in which people want to be identified. I think sometimes I hear white fellas throw out mob, dis, mob, that, and it feels a little bit inauthentic, like it kind of feels like they're trying, but I think the intention is right, but there needs to be relationships with communities you're working with to understand what is terminology, but also acknowledge that there's great diversity in terms of what people think. I think some of our older Indigenous LGBTQ plus community members don't like the term queer, and so we tend to sub out the term queer when we're talking to older parts of our community, whereas younger mob perfectly fine with that. I think if you're comfortable using it and you know the people that you work with are comfortable with you using it, I think that's okay, but you kind of need to take the cues otherwise it can come across a little bit insincere, I think. Bepp, I don't know what you might like to add there. Yeah, I just agree with that. And in terms of how people are describing their sexuality, when we leave it open, I mean, you'll see in the report that we've provided, we just put a table of all the ways that people describe their sexuality and gender, and it's it's diverse, but people are using things like pansexual, bisexual, demigirl, demiboy, so terms that are in the LGBT community, quite popular at the moment, and I think that's probably because we have a bit of a younger sample, this sample is under 30 as well. So yeah, terms that you would probably hear in non-aboriginal LGBT people. Thanks Bepp. So going back to questions that we got ahead of time, one for Braden was, are there cultural barriers to individuals identifying as part of the LGBTIQA plus community? And if so, how can practitioners navigate this to ensure all supports can be met? Yeah, it's an interesting question and one I think we get a lot. I think there's that kind of presumed opposition to queer inclusion in Aboriginal communities that we sometimes have ourselves that hasn't really been born out in some of the the stuff that we found in this study. So it's probably important to interrogate that a little bit, where we do see clear, clear barriers for Indigenous queer people, particularly is where you see the entwining of religio culture into understandings of Indigenous culture and that most certainly comes through quite clearly where where Indigenous queer mob don't feel embraced by the Aboriginal community that they're part of. Very, very often, I think in some of the the comments that we saw as part of the research, there was a religious underpinning to that. And I think, you know, we have to reflect on the kind of settler, colonial, heteronormative narratives around gender and sexuality and interrogate that a little bit more. But I think the idea that that it's that Indigenous cultures are inherently kind of exclusionary is one that we need to think about. So I guess in terms of practitioners thinking about how they navigate that, holding that understanding in the back of their mind is really critical. And I think it is difficult. But if you have, I mean, as I've had, you know, some elders in my community are really staunch Christians, for example, who who will really come at that line of thinking when it comes to queerness. And it's very difficult for noongar mob to go, hang on, uncle, I don't, I don't know. I don't know if that's correct. It's a really tricky space for modulus for non Indigenous people to get into. But I think when you're working one on one with somebody, it's something you can gently tease out and kind of work with people on. So it's it's a complex space. But I think holding that in the back of one's mind when working with clients is really critical. Thanks, Braden. And a question that came in ahead of time that Director Bepp, is how safe are ACOs for LGBTIQA plus people? And how can I as a specialist service provider support other organisations, particularly ACOs, to become more inclusive? Yeah, it's a great question. And again, it varies across Australia and it varies by location. And so we have worked with ACOs that are incredibly supportive and have pride flags out in the front, celebrate Pride Week. You know, Queensland Brisbane Aboriginal Health Service has young, deadly free, I think it is or have have actual t shirts, the deadly mob and other services that are supporting more subtly. So there's a particular person in the organisation that is pushing for inclusion and is challenging some of the leadership. And then we have services whose boards are really not on board with inclusion. And so it very much differs. But what we do find is the ACOs that we talk to probably by virtue of people wanting to be involved in our research is that there's a hunger for information on how to be more inclusive. Often that in ACOs, that's come from the sexual health team. So it is a good angle to come in from, I suppose it's sexual health teams wanting to know more about LGBT inclusion, because that's something that they talk about naturally in their work. And then trying to filter that through the rest of the organisation is the challenge ahead. Thanks, Bep. I'll put this out to both of you and you can think about who might want to answer. Camilla has asked, how can we support those transgender diverse people who might be incarcerated? It's a great question. I think not coming from that community and that not being my lived experience, it's also not something we interrogate as part of this research. In Western Australia we're really lucky. We have some very active and really thoughtful and considered transgender diverse advocacy groups who are really fantastic in helping us, I think in my everyday job, not just in research, really think through how we work proactively with communities. My answer here really is, again, probably community specific, but there'll be people who understand this better than we do, better than you do potentially, and partnering with them around making sure that firstly, this is something that they can contribute to or they can at least refer to somebody who knows. I think it's a better pathway to go. Research didn't interrogate it, but it's certainly something that should be looked into, but partnering with transgender diverse advocacy groups who are probably already doing the work is a really good place to start and helping them resource that work too. I don't know, Beth, what do you think? Yeah, I agree. Thanks, Beth. I was waiting for you to say more. Now I've got to get up my next question. Sorry. That's all right. There are all really interesting questions, but one I saw that I thought you much like from Leah, which is, do you think the low likelihood of wanting to see a professional identifies as part of the community is because the community is so small and it might be about privacy and professional boundaries? So it could be that. One of the things that we did ask, I don't know if it was in this slide deck, but we did ask the community participants whether or not they had trust in their health information being held confidentially by Aboriginal community controlled health organizations. And there was a great deal of trust in community participants in their information being held confidentially and safe. So from that point of view, that really did, I think, change. I think there's this kind of community narrative in WA anyway that, oh, don't go to that Aboriginal medical service because, you know, sister girl there on the bench, she'll be telling your auntie, etc. We didn't really see that in the data. There was a great level of trust and confidence in the service providers, the Aboriginal service providers. Bepp, I don't know if you wanted to add to that. Yeah, just I mean, in general, in terms of a community member and a psychologist, it's 50-50 when people come to me to ask for a referral to a recommendation for a psychologist, whether they want someone who's Aboriginal or not. Oftentimes that is they don't want to see someone as Aboriginal because they want to talk about family business and they just want to make sure that that is confidential and that I guess the clinician is not conflicted. But equally so, people want to talk to someone where they don't have to explain their lived experience. It's a broader conversation around practitioner fit and I think as practitioners, we should all want to feel comfortable talking about our lived experience and our positionality and whether that's going to match the client that we're seeing. Yeah, and I think one of the things that I found when I was engaging with a psychologist, the very useful thing they asked is what kind of psychologist do you want to be seeing? And I was able to say, I want someone who understands what it's like to be, I don't know, in a minority community or experience of discrimination, because that was important to the reason why I was going. And I think that kind of practice as an Aboriginal person was that that facility was really important to me in terms of seeking kind of mental health support. Thanks, Brad. And we've probably got time for a couple more questions. Sorry to everyone, we're not going to get to all your questions. But one that's really standing out to me that a few people have asked is in when talking about the findings, the word interrogating was usually being interrogated. And then Brad and use that word again just before and a few people have asked what, you know, why this word and how these words fits maybe with particular marginalised communities, what this means in terms of experience and also service delivery. How does that word sort of have resonance for you both? Oh, look, that's probably a subjective problem that I have. I think coming from my lived experience around seeking health support, I think the interrogation really comes from the fact that I found that there was always a reluctance to talk about this. And when I say interrogate community, it's probably the wrong use of the word. But I really wanted to really get in and under some of our organisations that are so important to the work that we do in communities to really make sure that when I'm referring, you know, you know, my queer Aboriginal friends to go to a service that I can trust that. And I think the interrogation really comes from, you know, the considerable mental health challenges you see Indigenous queer people having the considerable rates of suicide that we see in our communities. So for me, there was a sense of urgency. And I think that's probably where the word comes from, the interrogation piece. And it's also my own biases here. So I don't know if it's the best best term, but it does give you a sense of where I'm coming from when I use that term. Community is a different story, though. A cup just to maybe sort of wrap things up a little bit with questions. I don't know if Jamie in Bonson wants to jump back in again, but there's been a general question that came in in the chat, which is, will there be a framework or training that's created from this research to help organisations? And there was another one I remember from the chat that was also, is there training available for working with Queer Mob? And so I'm just wondering, obviously, Damian runs out. So he's, he's jumped back in again. He might like to comment, but also if Brad and Beppe are going to be developing any further work from this. So perhaps it might be good for you to talk through the work that you're, the other piece of work that you're doing around organisational development and then maybe Damian can talk through what he's doing. Sure. We are undertaking a large piece of work consulting with ARCOS across Australia around what competencies people need to work with this, with Aboriginal LGBT people. It's a work in progress. So there's no training developed at the moment where it's a, it's a large consultative piece. So I don't have anything available at the moment, but I know that there is Damian and Black Rainbow are doing, are holding this space very well at the moment for people looking for training. One of the things, just before Damian jumps in, one of the things that's been quite useful about what I've been heartened by is hearing range of community organisations, health organisations taking these findings and talking about them as part of their routine training and making sure that it is intersectional. So having the evidence base has really, I think slowly, I hope, driven a change in the way people talk about queer inclusion generally, particularly in Western Australia. But as you say, it's kind of, we have the evidence base now, so the training's going to catch up. But I know Damian's very much ahead of the game on this one. So Damian, your thoughts. Yeah, hi. I am running training called Saper Spaces. I've just actually just driven down from Darwin to Alice Springs to deliver here, then into Tennant Creek into Catherine going back. I developed it about in 2017, 2016, independent from any funding or any resource based on a need that I discovered or uncovered when working in the Kimberley region in suicide prevention where access to services wasn't a clear pathway for First Nations, LGBQTI folk. I've currently been refunded as a part of the suicide prevention trials that were happening around the country. I was funded under the Darwin trial and it was viewed as a success. So I've been refunded to or contracted actually by the Northern Territory Primary Health Network to roll it out throughout the Northern Territory. It's currently getting evaluated to look at further interstate opportunities. What's really fantastic about this particular bit of work that we've done over in WA but also what BEPS leading is that it's going to strengthen and really wrap the academic rigor and evidence base around what organizations do need. The workshop that I created was born out of lived experiences of First Nations queer person but also from my experience working in suicide prevention and plus I have a post grade qualification in suicide prevention as well. So these layered things strengthen what I do. I'm really excited for what's coming out of BEPS research so we can strengthen this stuff and I think there's opportunities for other organizations to even develop their own and localize it. Thanks Damien. So yes we would always direct you to check out Black Rambos work. Obviously you know Black Rambos behind the development of Puerhoburi but also just the amazing work that Damien's done and obviously you know you can also go to the website and donate which is always much appreciated. Beth and Brayden I'd like to invite you each to just give us a little something a little closing thought for a minute or two about the project or about what you think this project means. Someone certainly asked are you going to be doing more of this nationally which I think you hinted at earlier but you might like to touch on that each briefly. Sure I'll go first. I'll let Beth cover off on the national piece. Look I think in terms of some of the key takeaways I guess that might be helpful for the audience. There is a growing evidence base and a growing emergence of Black Queer scholarship around these matters and I think it's really important that we're engaging with that where we can and we're respecting that knowledge and really thinking about the implications for practice as we've done today. It's there. It's there to be absorbed and there to be worked with. I think in terms of practice relationships as I said are really critical in terms of the communities that you're working within those relationships with those key members in community in the Indigenous Queer community who you can be working with and partnering with. They're really vital when it takes time but it's well worth the effort in terms of what we try to do in this space. I also think partnering with organisations that are already doing the work and resourcing that work and working out ways in which you can kind of be on the same trajectory. I think one of the struggles we have is that you have really great organisations that might be small doing amazing work that are at risk of being defunded and you have big organisations that kind of wake up to needing to be inclusive in the queer space and it kind of steamrolls those smaller organisations or community-based organisations that are doing really wonderful work. So thinking about how you can build relationships and partner with those sorts of organisations and those with the lived experiences is really vital but as I said relationships with people in your community consulting the Black literature around health broadly is really important and also where you're starting to see some stuff in the Black Queer space it's really important to engage with that work as well. What about you Bet? Yeah absolutely I have a few take-homes from this project myself personally and then and then for the audience. So being brought into this project by Brayden and meeting Damien and hearing about the work Black Rainbow does and he does was an eye opener for me as an Indigenous woman so I didn't in my daily life think about queer members of my community so I think it's really great that everyone has showed up today and tried to gain some awareness of working with this community for people who weren't aware. I do think working with organisations who are on the ground is the best way to do it because as Brayden noted out that's where the the practice is happening it may be in small pockets and it may just be within small parts of the community but the good practice is happening there so I do encourage people to contact their Aboriginal Health Councils if they have one in their state or territory contact their local art shows find out what is happening in this space if at all and start having conversations around practicing in this space and then likewise one-on-one with the people that you are providing support for don't be afraid to talk about this intersectionality and how that might impact someone's life. Sorry from a national sorry from a national I was like yeah just watch this space like Brayden said there's Aboriginal queer scholarship it's thriving in Australia it's fantastic to see and you can follow all of us I suppose for some for national findings that will be coming out soon. Thanks Beppenbrayden so much and to Damien for joining us today if you'd like to access any of the supporting resources there in the info tab down the bottom right hand side thanks for everyone who joined us today we really appreciate your feedback on today's webinar and you can do that by either scanning the QR code on the slide or hovering at the top of the player that you're looking at this through until the survey banner appears and that will take you through to the survey link and all of this information will appear in a slide as well at the the close of the webinar which I think should probably be up now please. We will also be following up with you in the weeks to come with information about the link for how you can watch the recording of this webinar if you missed it or you want to watch it again and also the slides from today and more information about upcoming events there's going to be a new Black Rainbow Queer Robbery webinar in early 2023 so the third one which we'd love for you to join us with and there'll be more information about that coming soon and then in terms of upcoming webinars we've got is never too late to diagnose ADHD coming up in a few days time and we've got non-medical pharmacological supports and programs for older Australians coming up in December and before that we've got social emotional well-being of children with higher weight coming up in mid November. So just to wrap up I'd like to let you know that we'd like to the MHP would like to acknowledge lived experiences of people and carers who have lived with mental health in the past and those who continue to live with mental illness in the present. Thank you to everyone participating in the webinar today.