Confidence, practices and training needs of people working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ clients

Abstract

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ peoples face an elevated risk for poor health and social-emotional wellbeing, suggesting that this patient group are likely to attend health and community services. However, the current practices of those who deliver care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ peoples are unknown. Utilising mixed methods (survey; n = 197; focus groups and interviews; n = 56), we explored the current practices, confidence, knowledge, and training needs for working with Aboriginal LGBTIQ+ clients among Western Australian health and community service workers. Participants were predominately from the mental health and social-emotional wellbeing care sector. One-third of survey participants indicated that it was likely Aboriginal LGBTIQ+ peoples accessed their service. On average, participants reported high confidence and knowledge in working with Aboriginal LGBTIQ+ clients. Qualitative data indicated that staff struggled to accommodate what they understood to be the needs of clients who were both Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and LGBTIQ+, despite a willingness to 'get it right’. Findings provide the first-ever snapshot of inclusive practices among health and social support workers in Western Australia.

Keywords:

• Australia
• LGBTQ
• Indigenous
• health services

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 This study explored staff perceptions of their practice with Aboriginal clients. We used the term Aboriginal as is this preferred terminology among community members in Western Australia. Throughout the article we refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTQA + peoples/Indigenous Australian Queer and Gender Diverse peoples when discussing previous research studies that have included both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We acknowledge the immense diversity both between and within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and respect how individuals choose to identify.

2 Tests for normality (i.e. Shapiro-Wilk) and homogeneity of variance (i.e. Levene's test) indicated the assumptions of normality and the assumption of homogeneity of variance were violated for all outcome variables (except for homogeneity of variance for staff confidence). Therefore, we utilised Welch's ANOVA, robust to violations of normality and homogeneity.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by a Healthway Health Promotion Exploratory Research Grant (2017) from the Government of Western Australia awarded to Braden Hill, Jenny Dodd, Dameyon Bonson, Sian Bennett and Anne-Marie Eades.