Below is a reflection from Heidi Tweedie, project Champion and Peer Development Worker/ Researcher for the Moray Wellbeing Hub project.
Yesterday myself and another Champion met with Deejay Bullock from 4 Pillars, a LGBT support organisation that works right across Grampian. Deejay and I met at a MorayCollege Freshers Fair early this year and he was keen to increase awareness of a need for support for people in Moray. Currently there seems to be two support groups for the LGBT community, one within the college and one out with, and both are struggling to survive.
We chatted about how best to approach this issue and our interest in being supportive of a human rights approach – i.e. we are interested in individuals and their strengths, regardless of their life experiences. We agreed that there is a need to help people find both the specific peer support that we can all need when struggling with certain issues, be that LGBT related or anything else, and well as access support that based on a wider peer relationship – that of a non-judgemental ‘human being’ approach.
It was also worth noting that we covered the topic of discrimination and stigma between groups, for example we spoke about the word ‘recovery’ and the misunderstandings that still link this to drug and alcohol addictions, and the impact of stigma that may mean people will not come to a recovery event because they feel it is not for them.
We also spoke about diversity monitoring and how we can ensure that there is fair representation of a wide range of life experiences in jobs or projects, but that by simply asking these questions, categorising people, we can cause discrimination and encourage self-stigma especially. This is a topic that we hope to return to as part of our research in the hub project.
Next steps were agreed to stay in touch and to encourage Deejay to share any Moray specific information through our networks. He was keen to be part of our mailing list and share ideas that we might be able to support to encourage the connection of Moray’s LGBT community.
Overall it was a lovely and stimulating discussion. As someone who is not from this community I was hopeful that in starting connections with Deejay we have encouraged other Champions with relevant life experience to help guide our project to be supportive and useful to the LGBT community in Moray.
If you are interested in any of the topics raised in this post, please get in touch and we can share your reflections on this blog or support you to create change as part of the project.
