Policy and practice

Research into policy and practice

ARCSHS has unique expertise in the conduct of community-engaged research and in utilising research findings to produce training and resources for practitioners or to advise policy outcomes. Over the next three years, the Centre will be seeking to increase the impact and recognition of its work in this area.

This will include consolidating its community-engaged approach across a wide range of projects funded by government and others that utilise research findings to make a difference; for example, providing training and curriculum materials for use in schools; provision of training, resources and policy advice to a wide variety of community and organisational settings through research and evaluation projects; and, through Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria, which is based at ARCSHS. The Centre will be seeking to increase its academic outputs in this area, and seek competitive research funding to support a focus on community engagement, and research into policy and practice. This means looking specifically at the mechanisms by which community engagement guides and informs research, and by which research can inform policy and practice.

ARCSHS will also seek to strengthen its policy-based research, investigating the processes through which evidence informs practice and policy, or the barriers and challenges that prevent this in areas relevant to its research program.

Getting the Most Out of Our Research With Young People

Sexuality Education in Victoria From Prep to Year 10 In 2011, the implementation of Catching On Early began across Victoria. Jenny Walsh is the author of this first ever classroom resource to enable Victorian primary school teachers to cover appropriate areas of sexuality education at every level. The resource is evidence-based and designed to minimise controversy while giving young people the best possible start in what will be an important part of their lives in the future. Jenny Walsh and Mandy Hudson are currently conducting training sessions for teachers in both rural and urban areas.

In addition, the year 9 and 10 Catching On classroom resource, which is over a decade old, has been fully revised in light of new research at ARCSHS. Pam Blackman has been leading this work and has also written additional activities for year 7 and 8 so that there is now a resource covering the full secondary school program of sexuality education ready to be implemented in 2012.

Other highlights include the release of the Talk Soon, Talk Often resource to help parents talk to their children about sex. This resource was written for the Western Australian government by Jenny Walsh based on research carried out at ARCSHS by Sue Dyson. It received an enormous amount of media publicity and in its first few weeks 30,000 print copies were distributed.

Additionally, in 2011, Anne Mitchell and Jenny Walsh received a Family Planning Grant from the Commonwealth government to begin a complete revision of the national Talking Sexual Health resource to bring it into line with the new Australian curriculum.

The Ansell Sex Ed. national clearinghouse for sexuality education teachers, which Pam Blackman has been moderating for ARCSHS for some years, again proved to be a useful means for disseminating our research and promoting the resources we have developed out of it. This website now has over 1000 members who receive classroom demonstration kits from Ansell and a regular newsletter from ARCSHS.

Getting the Most Out of Our HIV and Hepatitis-related Research

An Informed Workforce

Jen Johnson is the coordinator of the Blood Borne Virus (BBV) Program, and her work focuses on getting our research directly into practice in the workforce. The Course in HIV and Hepatitis Pre- and Post-Test Discussion was delivered five times in 2011. Four courses were held in Melbourne and one was held in regional Victoria, and 72 people were accredited as HIV and hepatitis pre- and post-test advisors.

Other workforce development activities included the facilitation of regular BBV Update Forums, and the biannual meeting of the BBV Workforce Network. Topics investigated at these meetings included HIV rapid testing, and BBV health promotion and social media.

The BBV News electronic bulletin is sent every three weeks to a readership of about 650 workers. The BBV News keeps the highly diverse BBV workforce in touch with the latest research, training, policy and developments in this area. An evaluation of the BBV News conducted in 2011 indicated that readers found it to be a useful, important, credible and easy-to-read source of current information about HIV and hepatitis related events, programs and research.

In 2011, the Victorian Hepatitis B Alliance continued to grow. The VHBA, which was an initiative of the BBV Program, is an independent multidisciplinary group that aims to build momentum behind the Victorian response to hepatitis B. The VHBA began in 2008 as an informal working group of community-based and clinical professionals that were keen to effect change in hepatitis B policy and practice. In 2011, membership grew and the multidisciplinary VHBA made important contributions to hepatitis B policy and practice in Victoria. A website was also developed this year (www.vhba.org.au), which provides plain language information about hepatitis B to community and health workers.

Throughout 2011, the BBV Program responded to regular requests for HIV and hepatitis-related training, and contributed to the development of a variety of policies and resources.

Influencing the Big Picture

Research Into Policy

Many of our efforts in research dissemination go directly into influencing government policy to ensure it is evidence based. This involves both direct advocacy and responding to discussion papers put out by government. For example, this year we were involved in a consultation to develop the new Australian Curriculum in sexuality education, and a round table with Federal Minister Mark Butler on GLBTI people and ageing. We made submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Caring For Older Australians discussion paper and prepared a detailed submission to the Victorian Minister for Mental Health outlining a policy framework and rationale for a funded state-wide program to improve mental health services for same-sex attracted and gender questioning young people. Both these submissions were accepted and subsequently became enacted as part of policy.

Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria

Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria has been situated within ARCSHS since 2003 ‘to enhance and promote the health and well being of GLBTI people in Victoria’ by:

  • establishing and implementing best practice standards of care
  • training health care providers and health organisations about GLBTI health needs and appropriate service delivery
  • developing health resources for GLBTI communities, in conjunction with mainstream services
  • establishing a research and information clearinghouse as a resource for health care providers, researchers and individuals to use in researching their own health issues
  • providing advice to Government on the planning and development of future GLBTI programs

Staff of the Unit in 2011 were Associate Professor Anne Mitchell (Director), Liam Leonard (Health Education and Policy), Sunil Patel (Information and Resources), Dr Catherine Barrett (Aged Care Coordinator), Roz Ward (Youth Programs Coordinator) and Annie Hooper (Rainbow Network Co-ordinator).

Training

The GLBTI specialist training modules for drug and alcohol workers that were developed in 2010 were rolled out across Victoria in 13 sessions in both rural and urban locations. In addition, 2011 saw the completion of a specialist training module for mental health workers. This was piloted with Headspace staff from around Australia in October and will become part of the standard training on offer from GLHV in 2012.

In July 2010, a special series of workshops, How2 create a GLBTI inclusive service, were launched to coach service providers through the practical steps involved in creating a GLBTI inclusive service. In 2011, this was extended to rural areas in partnership with the Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health (CERSH). Seven services went through the process and achieved some outstanding results in making their services more sensitive to GLBTI consumers. A number of other services also accessed training sessions this year including Gamblers’ Help Line, Royal District Nursing Service, ACTU and Southern Health.

Val’s café continued to be a regular part of the training program providing support and information to workers with GLBTI seniors with a special session (High T) focussing on older transgender people.

Research

In partnership with ARCSHS and funded by beyondblue, the Victorian Department of Health and La Trobe University, Private Lives 2, the second national survey of the health and wellbeing of GLBT Australians was carried out, attracting nearly 4000 respondents around the country. These data have been analysed ready for a launch in 2012.

Resources

Most of the resources developed in 2011 were in the youth area and associated with the Safe Schools Coalition of Victoria, including the launch of the “Stand Out” brochure, posters and stickers for schools encouraging young people to do their own advocacy in schools. This work, done in conjunction with Minus 18, attracted over 100 young people to the launch.

By far our biggest resource is the clearinghouse which acts as a national and international resource to service providers, researchers and consumers on issues of GLBT health. This year it was given a complete re-vamp and relaunched in December. The new look web-site, which is also the clearinghouse, is attracting more users than the older version and gives us the flexibility to put a lot more of the information it houses up front.

The Rainbow Tick Project

For some years, GLHV has been working with Quality Improvement and Services Accreditation (QICSA) to develop an accreditation package for health and human services so that they can be formally accredited by an outside body. Services that pass the requirements of the Rainbow Tick will have demonstrated a real commitment to delivering best practice service to GLBTI consumers or will be well on the way to doing so. Once a service is accredited, it can be promoted through the clearinghouse. The work on this project was completed in 2011 and a series of organisations were selected for piloting in 2012.

Rainbow Network Victoria

This year, Rainbow Network Victoria has continued to provide training, resources, peer support, professional supervision, and has answered enquiries from anyone who works with same sex attracted or gender questioning young people. Membership of the network has increased to 322 members across Victoria, which is almost a doubling of the membership from last year. This year, the network ran a number of training sessions for its members including one on youth mental health in partnership with Orygen. In November 2011, Rainbow Network was given ongoing funding for the next four years.

Safe Schools Coalition Victoria

Safe Schools Coalition Victoria, a partnership between GLHV and the Foundation for Young Australians, is funded by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and, in late 2011, also by the Victorian Department of Health. The coalition aims to provide practical support to schools in Victoria to become places where same sex attracted and gender questioning young people are valued, where every family can belong, where every teacher can teach and every student can learn. Since its inception in 2010, it has signed up 56 member schools, provided professional development to thousands of teachers and supported young people to set up gay/straight alliances in schools.

Advice to Government

GLHV, in collaboration with YACVic, has overseen a major briefing to Minister Wooldridge on the distribution of the $4m committed by the new Liberal Government to SSAGQ youth mental health and suicide prevention. This involved convening a committee of stakeholders and developing a conceptual map of an emerging SSAGQ youth sector. Further, it required working with six separate SSAGQ youth related and mainstream youth organisations in the preparation of funding proposals that accompanied the framework document. This has been a major piece of work in which GLHV has played a significant role as the major GLBT health and wellbeing representative organisation in Victoria. We look forward to continuing all these activities in 2012.