I’m qualified at degree level to understand that diversity and inclusion play a significant role in the counselling relationship. My dissertation explored the lived experience of transition, which helped to embed my knowledge on the societal factors that can impact the health and well-being of the transgender community.
Do you or your organisation engage with people from the transgender community?
Your organisations’ philosophy might adopt a view there are skilled helpers in other sectors of society who can assist supporting the needs of your trans staff or service users.
Counsellors, psychologists, social workers, ministers of religions, it is their role to help others manage the distressing problems of life. Consequently, you may think you’re not able to help the trans community, but have you considered that you could make a significant life-enhancing difference too?
What are the values of your organisation, are they focused on providing a fair and impartial service?
Beliefs, values, ethics, and morality permeate throughout any helping process. According to Professor Gerard Egan there are a second set of people, that may characterise the role of your staff or volunteers, “Although they are not helpers in the formal sense also help people in times of crisis and distress”.
This includes, but is not restricted to:
- Volunteers
- Doctors
- Lawyers
- Nurses
- Midwives
- Health visitors
- Probation Officers
- Teachers
- Managers
- Pastoral support in schools & Universities
- Supervisors
- Police Officers
- Practitioners in other service industries
Therefore, skilled help, regardless of where it happens, should be one that engenders in people hope for a better life. This could mean the people who are your staff, and those people you help. And people with hope are more likely to achieve life-enhancing goals.
Helpers also establish relationships, but it is a myth that one kind of perfect relationship or alliance fits all people. No one size fits all. Your approach to trans people may not be one that enhances their lives.
What are your organisations diversity blind spots?
If you work in a public sector, how well do you think it fulfils its obligations to trans and other minority groups, under its Public Sector Equality Duty? Because the act requires you to foster or encourage good relations between people who share protected characteristics and those who do not. Have you considered what your organisations implied, or explicit messages are that foster or discourage good relations between people?
Do you tailor your organisations helping interventions in a diversity-sensitive way?
As an organisation that values inclusion, it should follow that you have a practical understanding of the diversity self-knowledge that needs to be employed in your helping interventions. So, for example, how well do you really understand the trans community? The more any helper understands the broad characteristics, needs and behaviours of the communities with whom they work, the better they are to adapt their life enhancing intervention.
Bridging your organisations blind spots
If you feel your organisations has blind spots when it comes to the trans community, we offer a solution to help bridge those knowledge gaps. Particularly as we also recognise that some people may want to ask questions but are worried about making mistakes.
Our sessions nurture a safe learning environment. We facilitate opportunities for questions to be asked anonymously. This freedom to ask without fear encourages maximum learning outcomes and reduce the risk of embarrassment discussing a topic that many people will have no understanding of.
Sessions include:
- Intersectionality and Trans identity models.
- Sources of support
- How your organisation has an important role in an individuals’ hierarchy of needs.
- How values, beliefs and unconscious bias intersect with trans community.
- Implied and explicit messages.
- Ambiguous Losses and Gains as outcomes of transition.
- Bureaucracy, discrimination and hate incidents.
- A supervisor’s “checklist” to support staff who transition.
- Words, phrases, and pronouns.
- What transition involves and highlighting what it may not involve too!
Book a face to face or online session today. Contact us for costs. Discounts offered for Charities and voluntary organisations.
Testimonials
“This is invaluable training for all services and organisations in their quest to be fully and authentically inclusive”
“It has given me a greater insight into particularly, the Transgender community. I didn’t know previous to today’s presentation, that it is unlawful to disclose one’s trans status without one’s consent. The examples of good practice around how to treat someone without having to disclose their status was invaluable”
“The session reinforced for me how crucial it is not to make assumptions, to respect people’s privacy and the essential need for LGBTQ+ older people who have dementia to have advocates, such as staff in our service. It is our duty, therefore, to keep learning as much as we can to help support our service users”.
These were three examples of attendee’s feedback in response to our recent LGBT people living with Dementia workshop. The online session was delivered to staff at Bristol Dementia Wellbeing Service, Brookland Hall, Conduit Place, Bristol. And it seems that they found the session we delivered was of use as the other feedback received is below.
“Really nicely paced, it never felt slow!”
“Plenty of opportunities to ask questions and respond to questions posed throughout the presentation.”
“A really good mix of personal experience and other people’s experience backed up with research. Impressive.”
“There was a lot of terminology to get my head around, but this was part of the learning.”
“This training has really made me think about the particular vulnerabilities that people from the LGBTQI+ community might face when diagnosed with a dementia.”
“Gina gave such an open presentation, using anecdotes and other’s lived experiences. I found this extremely helpful and thought provoking.”
“The style and content were fantastic! Very engaging, inclusive, reassuring and inspiring. I was so impressed with the speaker’s openness, transparency and frankness. Thank you.”
“I thought Gina’s way of presenting was inclusive, enlightening and compassionate. She used clear visual aids, a logical structure, and kept checking learning with the participants.”
“Thank you Gina, you are a brilliant presenter and I really enjoyed the session.”
“You challenged and provoked my thinking in a positive way throughout. I found your style open and honest. The content was very good.”