Practice considerations for creating an LGBTIQ-inclusive family violence refuge: Lessons from Rainbow Health Australia's mentoring pilot project

This guide provides information and inclusive practice guidance for family violence refuges that seek to safely support LGBTIQ people experiencing or at risk from family violence.

Like all people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender diverse, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) people deserve to live in a supportive community, and be treated with care and respect. Achieving this will require collaborative and concerted effort to promote choice, bodily autonomy, equality, and celebration of diverse human experiences of sex, gender and sexuality.

The Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence called for increased support for LGBTIQ victim-survivors who need to escape family violence and find safe accommodation. To work towards meeting this recommendation, Family Safety Victoria (FSV) funded Rainbow Health Australia to lead the LGBTIQ-inclusive Family Violence Refuge Mentoring Project 2019–2020. In this project Rainbow Health Australia mentored two family violence refuges in LGBTIQ-inclusive practice. This guide, which is for family violence refuges Australia-wide, is a major output of this project.

Rainbow Health Australia developed this guide in collaboration with two Victorian family violence refuges (referred to in this guide as ‘Refuge 1’ and ‘Refuge 2’) that were seeking to become LGBTIQ-inclusive. Both refuges were working towards Rainbow Tick accreditation – that is, accreditation using the Rainbow Tick framework to create an LGBTIQ-inclusive service and workplace.

Over the course of 12 months, Rainbow Health Australia provided mentoring and tailored training and support to each participating refuge to improve their organisational capacity for inclusion of LGBTIQ clients and staff.

This guide comprises: a) the key learnings from this mentoring, training and support process. This includes direct quotes from staff at the participating refuges about their experiences; b) insights on the contextual application of inclusive practice principles in a refuge setting; and c) ‘signposts’ to relevant sections in other key documents that reference LGBTIQ inclusion.