In November 2022, Nigel Polak, as PACFA’s President acknowledged and apologised for historic and ongoing harm and systemic oppression of people with excluded or marginalised gender, body, kinship, and sexuality (GBKS) lived experiences within the counselling and psychotherapy profession to attendees of PACFA’s Festival of Ideas.
(Queer kinships have been widely researched and discussed in many queer communities, both locally and around the world. For PACFA members who are unfamiliar with this concept and why we and many others have shifted to discuss ‘kinships’ instead of ‘relationships,’ we invite you to explore the many available cross-cultural sources on this topic by people and communities with queer lived experience through an internet search for this term).
Across the world there has been a shift away from speaking in generalities and lumping together lived experiences under categories like 'LGBTQIA+'.
This acknowledgement and preliminary apology are part of a broader and ongoing process of developing an Apology and Action Plan to promote intersectional diversity within PACFA. PACFA aims to provide a statement of intent and an action plan to support our members and their professions to address discrimination, stigma, pathologising, bigotry, racism, and systemic oppressions in all their forms.
The survey
As part of this plan, a survey has been developed (link below). This stage of the consultation focuses specifically on consulting with PACFA members, including students, with excluded or marginalised GBKS lived experiences. Responses to this consultation phase will be used to support acknowledgement of and apology for harms caused, ongoing research and consultation and the development of policy and best practice guidelines. This consultation survey uses a custom path for each person responding. This means that the number of questions adapts to your responses to previous questions. Depending on your responses and how much information you choose to share, responding might take as little as 5 minutes or longer than an hour.
The consultation survey will be open until Sunday, 24 March 11:59pm AEDT.
Thank you to the PACFA members who have already completed this survey. The GBKS Leadership Group team will be contacting those of you who indicated you would like to be contacted in the near future.
Contributing to this consultation is entirely voluntary. (This consultation is not formal research). All answers will be anonymous unless you provide personally identifying contact information, which is not required.
Your original responses will be shared only with the Diversity in GBKS Leadership Team. Answers shared beyond the Diversity in GBKS Leadership Team will be de-identified as needed to protect your privacy before being shared beyond the team with PACFA and the public.
Information you share with us for this practitioner consultation may be shared in de-identified form on PACFA's website, in a published report shared with PACFA members, and/or shared in other publicly available content.
If you are a PACFA member or student with excluded or marginalised GBKS lived experiences, we invite you to find out more about this consultation and complete the survey using this link.
All questions related to this survey should be directed to [email protected].