The location of Australia’s first state-funded LGBTQIA+ healthcare centre has yet to be confirmed, though an additional $700,000 has been committed to develop the facility somewhere in Sydney.
Services ranging from expert sexual to mental health care will be offered at the centre, which will be run by the AIDS Council of Australia (ACON).
The announcement was made at the launch of the NSW LGBTQIA+ Health Strategy 2022-2027, which was developed with the help of more than 1600 community members.
“The community really should have had this years ago,” Health Minister Brad Hazzard told a press conference at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre attached to St Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghurst, Sydney.
“Information that comes from people who understand what the challenges are is critical.”
The ACON-run Sydney healthcare centre received a $3.5m investment as part of an election promise made in March 2019.
The additional investment brings the centre’s funding to $4.2m, with the state government providing an additional $3.4m towards specialist trans and gender diverse support, $2.65m for education and training of health staff and $1.78m to mental health and suicide prevention.
St Vincent’s Hospital chief executive Anthony Schembri shared his own eye-opening experience of feeling out of place in the healthcare system.
Mr Schembri was diagnosed with a “rare and random life-changing illness” earlier this year and has just returned to work after eight weeks in hospital.
“What I wasn’t prepared for was the number of times as a patient I was asked if my wife was coming to pick me up after a procedure or whether my partner – pronoun she or her – was joining the consultation,” Mr Schembri said.
Having worked in various facets of the NSW Health system for more than 25 years, he said he was shocked to discover health staff still lacked the training to create an inclusive healthcare experience.
“There was an assumption that I was heterosexual in these healthcare settings – not always but enough to feel uncomfortable at times,” he said.
“I considered whether I should ‘out’ myself, but I wondered, ‘Will I be treated any differently? Will it affect my care?’” he said.
Robyn Kennedy, a 78er and former board member of the Sydney Gay and Mardi Gras, spoke of the particular challenges experienced by ageing LGBTQIA+ people.
“Many older LGBTQIA+ people in Australia are the first generation in our society to have lived their entire adult lives out and proud,” Ms Kennedy said.
She explained that the experience Mr Schembri detailed was something dealt with daily in aged care facilities that she said were “almost universally framed by heteronormative experiences”.
