Engender Equality and Working It Out have partnered to provide specialist family violence counselling and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer, asexual and other sexuality and gender diverse people.
The LGBTIQA+ Family Violence Service is:
- Free and confidential
- Available by phone and/or online using Zoom, and face-to-face in Hobart
- 1 hour appointments (first appointments may go for longer)
- Mid to long term engagements over a two-year period. Some people will only need a few sessions, some people will participate in many more
- For LGBTIQA+ people, including people who are questioning or exploring their gender or sexuality, over the age of 15 who have experienced family violence perpetrated by intimate partners, including those in non-traditional relationship structures.
Specialist LGBTIQA+ Family Violence Practitioners are:
- LGBTIQA+ identified or strongly allied
- Based in Hobart and able to provide Telehealth across Tasmania
- Co-located with Working It Out and Engender Equality offices
- Able to use an interpreter if you need one
- Committed to protecting your privacy and offering secure, confidential services – you can read our Privacy Policy here
- Able to provide trauma-informed family violence counselling, including risk assessment and safety planning, to support you with an experience of intimate partner violence
- Qualified, specialised and supported with regular clinical supervision and ongoing professional development.
What is Intimate Partner Violence?
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is violence or abuse used by a current or former intimate partner. An intimate partner refers to someone you have dated (once off, casually or seriously), a partner you have or have not lived with, or someone you have married or been in a long-term relationship with.
An intimate partner may be part of a non-traditional relationship structure, such as within a polyamorous relationship or a queer platonic relationship.
Relationships of a transactional nature, such as through sex work, are also considered an intimate partner relationship.
LGBTIQA+ people experience IPV at the same rate, if not higher, as the broader population.
In a relationship where there is IPV, one person uses power and control. This is achieved and maintained through patterns of behaviours that are violent, threatening, coercive or controlling. IPV may cause:
- Psychological
- Emotional
- Sexual
- Spiritual
- Physical, and/or
- Financial harm
IPV may include behaviours that are physically and non-physically violent and abusive. IPV includes experiences of coercive control. Common behaviours or tactics used by abusive partners are often driven by possessiveness and obsession.
LGBTIQA+ people may experience some unique forms of violence and abuse, including:
- Threatening to ‘out’ you, including HIV status, gender, sexuality or variation of sex characteristics
- Forcing you to hide your relationship, making you feel shameful about your relationship and sexuality
- Controlling, invalidating or ridiculing your gender expression, including hurtful messaging about ‘passing’
- Deadnaming and not using your pronouns
- Using past relationships or sexual experiences to invalidate your sexuality
- Blaming your sexuality (e.g. bisexuality) and using it as justification for jealous and controlling abusive behaviours
- Controlling or preventing your access to medication or treatment (e.g. PrEP, PEP, antiretroviral therapy, gender-affirming hormones or contraception)
- Isolating you and controlling or preventing your access to your support network, LGBTIQA+ spaces, chosen family or community.
To contact Working It Out Inc, please visit their website:
https://www.workingitout.org.au/
What is Family Violence?
Family violence is a broad term often used to describe violence and abuse that occurs in family relationships. Family relationships can be relationships between parents, siblings, grandparents and other kinship relationships. Relationships between carers, foster carers and co-residents in residential domestic settings (for example, in shared housing or supported accommodation) can also be considered family relationships.
LGBTIQA+ people experience family violence at the same, if not higher rates, than the broader population, particularly due to high rates of experiences of violence and abuse within families of origin.
In Tasmania, the Family Violence Act 2004 defines family violence as violent and abusive conduct committed by a person against their spouse or partner.
The LGBTIQA+ Family Violence Service specialises in providing trauma-informed therapeutic services to LGBTIQA+ people in Tasmania who have experienced intimate partner violence. We are currently unable to support people who have, or are, experiencing family violence occurring in other kinds of family relationships. If you are seeking support for experiences of family violence that are not intimate partner violence, you can contact the following 24/7 services:
How to access the LGBTIQA+ Family Violence Service
There is unlikely to be a wait time to access our LGBTIQA+ Family Violence Service, however, you may need to be placed on a short wait list depending on service demand. Our intake team will provide you with the latest wait lime information when you first contact us.
If you would like to access our services, you can call us on (03) 6278 9090. If we are not available, please leave a confidential message and we will return your call as soon as we can. We operate during normal business hours.
Or you can contact us (in confidence) here:
If you are making an appointment on behalf of another person please complete our Referral Form and return it to us here.
Telehealth Services
If you are unable to access face-to-face sessions, we can provide counselling services via phone, or online using Zoom.
- Phone Counselling
For phone counselling, you will need to be in an area with reasonable phone reception or have access to a landline. - Online Video Counselling
For video counselling, you will need an internet connection and a secure, private computer, mobile phone or tablet that runs Zoom. To make sure your phone and/or online services are right for you, read our Terms and Conditions.