Summary for Service Managers

Organisational Policies

Organisations should review policies to ensure that they recognise diversity, intersectionality, and place an emphasis on equity, not just equality. Multiple changes can be made to ensure internal policies and procedures and external collateral explicitly include different groups in the LGBTIQ+ community. This needs to be accompanied by adequate training, resources, and support.

Procedures and Facilities

LGBTIQ+ people experience increased risks and barriers in mainstream facilities and have diverse needs. Organisations should ensure that planned service improvements and ongoing quality improvement activities reflect the needs of LGBTIQ+ people. Organisations should commit to ongoing audits of the physical safety and accessibility of its services as well as of internal feedback, complaints, and other consumer participation processes.

Consumer Participation

Ensure consumer participation strategies include opportunities for LGBTIQ+ people with different lived experiences and promote peer leadership. Strategies should ensure that LGBTIQ+ people are reimbursed for their knowledge, skills, and time.

Staff Training

Ensure that new and existing staff receive ongoing training and professional development opportunities to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to provide LGBTIQ+ inclusive practice. Training needs to be an ongoing process rather than one-off, and to be planned and prioritised, embedded in induction, and supported with additional training focused on more marginalised groups and intersectional identities. Organisations should assess and monitor LGBTIQ+ inclusive practice through client surveys and staff supervision.

Data Capture and Storage

Review internal data collection processes (including intake forms and client management systems) to ensure, where possible, that they include a range of options and cultural variations in relation to gender, pronoun/s, sexual orientation, intersex variation, and relationships (such as family, and preferred emergency contacts), as well as ‘prefer to self describe’ free text boxes. Appropriate language should be used that reflects the name, gender, and experiences that a client, tenant, or applicant identifies with where possible. Data fields should enable people to select more than one option, and not conflate intersex variations with gender or sexual orientation.