Our approach is simple – everyone is welcome here. We celebrate and embrace people’s diversity and everything that makes them who they are.
Organisational capability
All St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital policies and procedures are inclusive of all people, no matter their sexuality and gender identity. If you are a member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community, you will feel like you belong here.
Our journey to LGBTQ inclusion is led by allies who work together to support our staff and consumers to be their true selves at work and when accessing our services.
An Ally is an advocate for LGBTQ inclusion – a supporter, a friend, a person who wants to see change and is prepared to help bring it about.
As part of the UnitingCare family, our Ally program aims to support all LGBTQ people. Under the program, a visible network of UnitingCare employees – Allies – work to ensure our environments are safe, welcoming and inclusive for sexually and gender diverse people, whether they be employees, volunteers, consumers or their carers or family.
This program supports our commitment to ensuring people are free to be their whole selves, where they work and live in safe and positive environments, free from harassment, discrimination or bullying.
We have Allies spread across the organisation to whom our employees, volunteers, consumers, their carers and family can reach out and have a conversation.
Workforce development
We provide LGBTQ inclusion training to our employees and leaders and ensure the lived experiences of LGBTQ communities inform our service delivery and the way we interact with our consumers.
Consumer participation
St Andrew’s values LGBTQ consumer participation and patient representatives to provide us with leadership and advice on our care and services, a review process for patient information and design of our service. If you would like to get involved and support us in designing our services, please contact our Risk and Quality team by email to SAWMH-RiskandQuality@uchealth.com.au
Welcoming and accessible
We celebrate and recognise key awareness events each year through our diversity awareness days calendar, including:
- International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia.
- Intersex Awareness Day.
- Wear it Purple Day.
- Transgender Day of Visibility.
- Brisbane Pride Festival.
- Mardi Gras.
- International Pride Month.
Disclosure and documentation
Personal information including sexual orientation and gender identity are treated with the utmost confidentiality in accordance with our privacy policy.
Culturally safe and acceptable services
We have safety mechanisms in place to identify, minimise and mitigate risks to cultural safety for LGBTQ people, including monitoring consumer and staff feedback, reviewing incidents and audit results, and implementing quality improvements.