12 July 2024
The recent professional development sessions have been part of our ongoing efforts to provide high quality content that meets the needs of our diverse membership. These events have included a range of topics, each designed to address specific areas of interest and expertise within the PACFA community.
Our commitment to continuous improvement means we are always seeking feedback and suggestions on how we can enhance our offerings. We appreciate the constructive feedback received from members regarding various aspects of our community CPD sessions and are using this to refine and improve future events.
PACFA’s commitment to enhancing inclusivity and representation
Ensuring that our CPD sessions are inclusive and representative of all PACFA registrants and members is a key priority for PACFA. We understand the importance of recognising and embracing diversity within our professional community and are dedicated to making our CPD events more inclusive.
As part of our efforts to support inclusivity, we are working on integrating feedback into the planning and execution of our CPD events. This includes acknowledging and addressing any gaps in representation to ensure that our sessions are relevant and valuable to all registrants and members.
By way of update, the Older People (OP) Interest Group (IG) recently promoted a PD about ‘understanding menopause’ that framed menopause as only experienced by women and as something universal to all women's bodies.
Since then, we have been grateful to receive feedback about the people who were excluded by this framing. To demonstrate our efforts toward accountable solidarity, we want to recognise people whose genders and bodies are unfortunately excluded from many popular discussions of menopause. In particular, we want to explicitly acknowledge that people of any gender can experience menopause, including men of trans experience and non-binary people. We also affirm the diversity of bodies among all women, which includes women with a trans lived experience or history and intersex women/women with variations of sex characteristics.
The OP IG sincerely apologises both for the unintentional negative impact of this exclusionary framing and also for unintentional distress caused to people whose experiences of menopause was excluded. We appreciate PACFA members’ courage to raise this important issue of inclusive practice with the Diversity in Gender, Body, Kinship, and Sexuality (GBKS) Interest Group.
We are using this opportunity to learn and reflect on the meaning of exclusion and promoting inclusive practice for our membership, including our commitment to support future CPD presenters to increase their awareness about the diversity of people with whom PACFA practitioners work and to integrate this awareness into the content and framing of their CPD. We also look forward to future collaboration with the GBKS Interest Group toward achieving our shared aims of a more inclusive and affirming PACFA for all our members and the communities we serve.
Looking ahead
We are pleased about the future of our community CPD program and look forward to continuing to provide valuable learning opportunities for our registrants and members in the 2024-2025 registration and membership year. Your ongoing support and engagement are key to our success and we are committed to working together to create an inclusive and enriching environment for professional development events.
Thank you for your ongoing support. We appreciate your continued participation and feedback.