Five minutes with Eloise Layard, Acting Director Community Health, ACON

Can you tell us about your role at ACON?

In my acting role at ACON I’m lucky enough to oversee and support ACON’s client services; sexual domestic and family violence; harm reduction;  safety inclusion and justice, trans health equity and health equity programs.

This means I have the opportunity to be part of ACON’s work supporting communities through direct service provision as well as health promotion activities and community development - from events providing opportunities for social connection to responding to and working to prevent hate crime.

Can you explain to us the services and resources ACON provides for people living with HIV and people of diverse sexualities and genders?

ACON is NSW’s leading health organisation specialising in community health, inclusion and HIV responses for people of diverse sexualities and genders.

ACON provides a really wide breadth of free (or very low cost) counselling, care coordination, peer support and ageing support services to people living with HIV and their families, and LGBTQ+ people.

We offer HIV testing services, information about HIV prevention and HIV support including workshops for gay, bi and queer men (cis and trans) who are newly diagnosed with HIV.

We also provide resources and education on a variety of health and wellbeing issues for community, from sexual health to resources relating to sexual, domestic and family violence.

We run workshops including Disability Justice Social Groups, peer run relationship and sexual health workshops, and more.  We also have a wide array of resources for professionals and employers who support LGBTQ+ people.

To find out more about the services ACON provides I’d recommend visiting  acon.org.au, where you can browse our ‘what we’re here for’ and ‘who we’re here for’ website sections to find the support and information you need.

Recently ACON ran some information sessions with NSW Councils about LGBTQ+ Safety, one of the sessions included a presentation from Anti-Discrimination NSW. Can you tell our readers why these were needed?

Unfortunately, in recent years ACON has seen a rise in disinformation, lobbying, stigma and violence directed at LGBTQ+ people, especially trans people. We know that to change this and improve safety for LGBTQ+ people, we need to see a whole of community response, and need to take a stand against hate. One of the pieces of work that ACON undertook as part of our Safety, Inclusion and Justice program was creating guidance for hosting LGBTQ+ events safely.

LGBTQ+ events and opportunities to connect with one another are integral to creating safer healthier communities, but we found that these events were facing pressure from hate groups and anti-LGBTQ+ lobbyists. It was important to us to create resources that bring together wisdom from LGBTQ+ organisations and supporters about how we can stay safe - including specifically for councils. At a local level councils play a really important role in supporting community events.

We were grateful for the support from the City of Sydney to create a workshop series, including with councils, to continue to share ideas and strategies for ways people can work together to achieve safety. The presentation from Anti-Discrimination NSW helped to give attendees a really good understanding of the protections and options available to them under the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act.

To what extent do you think people of diverse sexualities and genders face discrimination?

Unfortunately, people of diverse sexualities and genders regularly face discrimination. For example, in one national study of LGBTQ+ people, Private Lives 3, 57% of participants reported that they had been treated unfairly because of their sexual orientation in the last 12 months. Over three quarters (77.5%) of trans and gender diverse participants reported that they had been treated unfairly to some degree because of their gender identity in the past 12 months.

We know that some members of our communities, including trans people, LGBTQ+ people with disability  and LGBTQ+ people of colour, experience discrimination at higher rates than others. This is because of the ways that structural inequalities and discrimination intersect. It’s important to talk about and name the different forms of discrimination LGBTQ+ people can experience so that we stand in solidarity with one another and can work towards change.

Wear It Purple Day is on Friday, 30 August. Wear it Purple strives to foster supportive, safe, empowering and inclusive environments for rainbow young people. Can you tell our readers about the importance of this day?

Wear It Purple, and Wear It Purple Day do amazing work fostering safer environments for Rainbow Young people. As ACON is an organisation that works with LGBTQ+ people who are over 18, we don’t personally take on additional activities for Wear It Purple, however we acknowledge the day as an important diversity day and as a chance for youth and allies to come together to demonstrate to young people that they have the right to be proud of who they are and to be celebrated and respected. It’s a way to demonstrate solidarity and support through something as simple as wearing purple.

On a personal note, I was actually involved as a young person in Wear It Purple, in the early days of its founding. Through Wear It Purple, I had the opportunity to speak publicly about my experiences as a younger bisexual person, and it was so empowering to feel that my voice was being heard. It meant so much to me to see visible commitment from others around me to supporting LGBTQ+ rights and wellbeing.