Natalie Woods, the services and development manager at Brighton & Hove, LGBT Switchboard, presented the Annual Report at LGBT Switchboard’s AGM at the end of November 2012. She said the last year had seen significant successes and challenges for Switchboard, the LGBT counselling and helpline service, which in its 37th year needed to raise £20,000 to continue to deliver its telephone and face-to-face counseling services to those in Brighton and beyond.
Ten counsellors (later reduced to five due to lack of funds) received 61 requests for counselling, and counselled 45 people. The service had an average waiting time of 8-12 weeks, and at the time of writing there are 21 people waiting for counselling with an average wait time of 5 months.
Twenty-one volunteers delivered the help-line service and a ring-back service was started where callers can now leave a message and receive a call back.
Despite the challenges, Switchboard have survived a turbulent year and have been able to continue providing high quality help-line and counselling services to meet LGBT people’s needs.
Key achievements in 2011-2012:
• Provision of help-line services to over 900 callers
• Provision of 331 counselling sessions to 45 clients
• Grant funding secured from The Lloyds TSB foundation towards core costs.
• Grant funding from The Cooperative Community Membership Fund to recruit and retain a trans identified counsellor for 12 months
• Significant funds raised from community fundraising activities
• Recruitment of a qualified trans identified counsellor
• Development and delivery of a training programme for local counsellors/therapists to increase their knowledge and understanding of the issues that affect LGBT people
• Co-management of LGBT Health and Inclusion Project (HIP) in partnership with Terrence Higgins Trust – the project achieved success in engaging with the LGBT community on a number of important issues including: mental health experiences and needs, sexual health needs of bi and trans people.
Whilst 2011-2012 was a financially challenging year by the end of the year Natalie reported they were on the road to recovery and had begun to identify strategies to:
• Develop fundraising strategy and action plan to strengthen our sustainability
• Build a stronger, sustainable Trustee Board
• Aim to increase capacity within the counselling service.
• Increase staff hours to increase organisational capacity
• Secure a comfortable appropriate dedicated space for counselling
• Develop existing partnership work and explore new partnership work to meet unmet needs of the LGBT community
• Increase community engagement activity and strengthen community connections
• Develop service user involvement initiatives
• Improve outcome based monitoring and evaluation systems
• Develop the website
• Develop the use of social media
The Helpline is operated weekdays 5-9pm and weekends 5-7pm.
A wild and windy forecast for Christmas Day is causing extremely dangerous conditions for both novice and experienced swimmers who may want to have a festive dip.
The forecast is for increasingly strong winds up to and including Christmas Day. This follows almost a week of heavy swell, causing extremely hazardous sea conditions. On Christmas Day itself, the wind is forecast to increase during the morning to become strong by midday, with gusts of between 25-30mph.
As there is now a real risk to anyone entering the water, Brighton & Hove City Council will be closing the beach on December 25 at the site of the traditional Christmas Day swim, which usually takes place at 11am. The seafront team will be on the beach from 8.30am to put up signage, inform the public of the temporary closure and give advice regarding the conditions.
High tide at 9:10am will bring tides of up to 5.7metres that will also add to the high waves and volatile sea conditions. Last year a drowning man was rescued on Brighton beach in similar conditions and in 2007 12 people were rescued, again when the weather was windy with treacherous waves.
Sea swimming takes skill, stamina and knowledge of the physical dangers. Even on a calm day sea currents, undertow or a sudden change in weather can create life threatening hazards without warning.
Brighton & Hove City Council’s seafront team monitors the sea conditions but there is no beach lifeguard service in operation during the winter months.
Seafront manager Viki Miller explained:
“It can be tempting to have a splash in the sea at Christmas, but it’s absolutely not worth putting yourself at risk. Not only could you be caught out by the strong currents, but the sea temperature is extremely cold this time of year.
“We will be monitoring the weather on the day and will be advising people about safety. The conditions are already hazardous, with the forecast set to get worse, so as a last resort we will be closing the beach tomorrow. We want people to be able to enjoy the beach, but safety is a top priority.”
The seafront team’s winter water facts show why it is better to stay on the shore rather than in the water at this time of year:
• Sea temperatures in the winter months are about 5 degrees centigrade and can be even colder.
• The wind chill makes the air temperature seem colder than the sea. Even on an apparently clear sunny day, the sea temperature can drop body temperature quickly and fatally.
• It only takes a few minutes for the body’s core temperature to drop by two degrees and for the onset of hypothermia to begin.
• It is never safe to go into the sea after drinking alcohol. Even a small amount of alcohol speeds up the onset of hypothermia in cold water. Drinking also reduces your capabilities. You may also think you are a better swimmer than your true ability and take unnecessary risks.
• Anyone with a pre-existing medical condition or taking medication runs additional risks by subjecting their body to a sudden drop of temperature by entering the sea.
• Winter environmental conditions can be extremely challenging, even for the most experienced swimmers. The tide and the weather dictate the conditions and these should not be underestimated.
• There is no beach lifeguard service provision in place during the winter months
• Large crashing waves close to the shore can place lifeboat crews’ lives at risk and make it impossible to reach those in need.
It is 2010 and I’ve been Deputy Headteacher of a large inner city primary school in London for several years.
There is a knock at my office door and two children stand looking crestfallen, accompanied by a red faced lunch time supervisor.
“Can you sort this out please Shaun?” she asks, obviously annoyed. “Jason here called David gay and now David is upset”
“OK, what have you done so far?” I ask the red faced lunch time supervisor.
“I told Billy off and told him it wasn’t a very nice thing to say. I brought them straight to you as I thought, well, that you could sort this one out” comes the reply.
This anecdote conveys the sense of an adult working in a school who is either unwilling or unable to tackle homophobic bullying. This event proved to be a turning point for me, as that red-faced lunch time supervisor was one of many adults in my own school who presented me, the single openly gay member of staff in my own school with any and every incident that involved the use of homophobic bullying or language, particularly the use of “You’re gay” and the use of “those (trainers/jeans etc) are gay” as a pejorative term.
I started to ask questions: what happens I wondered, in schools where there are no gay staff, who deals with homophobic incidents in these schools?
What happens with homophobic incidents in a faith school? Could opinions on homosexuality create barriers to dealing with homophobic bullying and language and result in children being damaged? After all, whether we approve or not, statistically some of those small children in faith schools will also grow up to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
Would adults in schools always send incidents of racism to a black member or school leadership or bullying around disability to a disabled member of staff?
How could pupils with gay family members or friends feel included if they were told that ‘gay’ was not a ‘nice word to say’?
What of those pupils, some of whom are already aware at primary school age that they are different, who only hear negative associations from certain sections of the media, family members, peers and adults in school? I knew first hand how self awareness at an early age ( I first knew I was attracted to men around the age of four) can lead to the feeling that one is growing up in an alien world.
I was also aware of the impact upon pupil attendance, attainment, mental and physically health of homophobic bullying.
In recent years at my school we had experienced several children openly questioning their identity and using the words gay and transgender which seemed to result in staff backing off or feeling uncomfortable in terms of how to reassure pupils.
Training was sorely needed, and it was needed by the whole staff, from school leaders to the premises manager and dinner supervisors.
I started by auditing pupils in Key Stage Two using a questionnaire around the the different kinds of bullying and language they were experiencing. I used a similar questionnaire with all staff to see how confident they felt in tacking various forms of bullying and prejudice, dealing with same sex parents and whether or not they thought the pejorative use of “you’re so gay/those trainers are so gay” could actually cause emotional damage to a child with same sex parents, gay siblings or if they were actually themselves questioning their identity.
The questionnaires proved to be a very relevant starting point for the work that has now morphed into my charitable organisation Inclusion For All.
• 75% of pupils were hearing “You’re so gay/lesbian” and “those trainers are so gay” on a daily basis.
• 65% of staff in the school did not see a link between the use of the use of gay as a pejorative term and homophobic bullying.
• No one had any training on homophobia or LGBT issues.
Through carefully planned training events and assemblies I fed this data back to pupils, parents and staff. I knew I would need to remain open to a range of views on the subject whilst ensuring that the rationale for the work was kept to the needs of the pupils to be successful, safe and happy.
The training was well received and within a school year we had reduced incidents of homophobic bullying to zero. We also observed a shift in prejudicial attitudes on a wider basis amongst pupils, parents and staff and as a result the school community has become more cohesive.
The obvious next step was for me to take what we had done and offer it to other schools locally, as a result of this work I began to get requests to speak at Stonewall and other anti-bullying conferences. We were also invited to become a founding member of the Stonewall School Champion Scheme.
Over time it became apparent to me that I needed to keep a record of my work and that this in itself could encourage and support other school leaders to address homophobic bullying in their own schools; thus www.shaundellenty.com was born.
I was keen for the website to support teachers in tearing down some of the barriers that schools put up to this work, and to this end I wanted to interview school staff who had been through the process already and were able to talk about their work and its positive impact on camera. These Inclusion For All ‘videocasts’ have proved to be a talking point and are being added to regularly.
I am pleased to report that the website has been well received and despite it being early days, I have heard now heard from teachers, parents and pupils from across the globe who feel that more should be done to educate and inform about LGBT people in our schools. Only this week I heard from a teacher in Florida who is using www.shaundellenty.com as a teaching resource with her class of 11 year olds.
This year I became the first openly gay school leader to lead a workshop on homophobic bullying at the National College for School Leadership annual conference, this Autumn I am meeting with the Department of Education to see what more can be done on a strategic level nationally.
Inclusion For All has grown from being an idea forged to address a problem in one school to being a small charitable organisation and as such I am about to start fundraising.
November 15 saw our first ‘in house’ training day at my own school, Alfred Salter Primary School, dedicated to tackling homophobic bullying, training which we hope to run once a term. In the meantime I continue to offer training to schools and individuals and attempt to share positive messages of how tackling homophobic bullying in schools can raise standards for all children and empower schools to tackle all forms of prejudice based bullying.
It is my dream, having reduced incidents of homophobic bullying to practically zero within a year in my own school, that within five years every school in this country will take a similar stance. If not, it is us, as school leaders that will have to face the shame that we let our pupils down.
Simon Kirby, MP for Kemptown and Peacehaven has issued a Christmas message wishing all Gscene readers a Happy Chrismas and Prosperous New Year.
The message reads:
“As 2012 draws to a close I wanted to take this opportunity to wish Gscene readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. “2012 has seen significant progress on LGBT issues, with the recent announcement that the Government will legislate to bring in equal marriage. I am fully supportive of this moves and have been heavily involved in supporting the Minister for Equalities on this issue. “Locally I was delighted to take part in the 2012 Equality Walk and to welcome James Ledward, editor of Gscene, to 10 Downing Street to meet with the Prime Minister. “Brighton Kemptown is an incredibly special place, and one of the reasons Brighton is such a wonderful city and I was therefore happy to speak at a meeting organised by local residents to discuss ‘community safety’ in the St James’s Street area. “I remain Vice Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on HIV/AIDS and took an HIV test to help raise awareness of National HIV testing week. “Please be assured I will continue to take a close interest in LGBT issues in 2013. “Best wishes for the festive period.”
Simon
Simon Kirby MP
Member of Parliament for Brighton Kemptown
“Locally I was delighted to take part in the 2012 Equality Walk and to welcome James Ledward, editor of Gscene, to 10 Downing Street to meet with the Prime Minister.
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