Episode 38: Where disability meets LGBTIQ+

Meet people with disability from across the state in Choice and Control, a podcast from Carers Queensland.

About this Episode
Transcript

About this Episode

The NDIS is here to help all Australians, but not everybody is comfortable sharing their story with service providers or official agencies. If you've experienced discrimination in that environment in the past, it's understandable you'd be reluctant to put yourself in that situation again.

One of the groups who have faced generations of discrimination in Australia are the LGBTIQ+ community.

To make sure our services are welcoming and accessible to everybody, Carers Queensland now has a new way to get in touch. During World Pride celebrations we launched a new email address – rainbow@carersqld.com.au – that connects you with a Rainbow Responder. They're Carers Queensland staff who are themselves LGBTIQ+ and can support your enquiry from a place of lived experience and compassion.

To find out more about sitting at the intersection of the rainbow community and the disability community, we caught up with Brisbane's Tim Lachlan. Tim's neurodivergent, queer and uses a wheelchair, and says each of those elements of his identity have shaped his experiences.

Tim's an accomplished wheelchair motocross athlete and recently achieved his qualifications as an occupational therapist. He's already run events and skill building sessions for other wheelchair users, and will be using his blend of personal experience and clinical skills to support other people with disability.

Mentioned in this episode

Credits

Interview: Fiona Stutz
Production: Jodie van de Wetering

Transcript

Download the transcript (Word)

Choice and Control episode 38

Where Disability meets LGBTIQ+

Transcript

0:00 Carers Queensland announcement: LAC Connect: It's a new way to stay in touch with your Local Area Coordinator, Carers Queensland, with everything you need right here on your device. It's a handy app to keep track of your LAC appointments, browse workshops and events, check out information and support, and get the latest news, stories and podcasts. It's available on Android and iOS, so whatever device you have, you can stay in touch. Head to our website to sign up at carersqld.com.au and look for LAC Connect.  

0:40 Voiceover: Choice and Control, a podcast celebrating people with disability, brought to you by Carers Queensland NDIS Local Area Coordination Partner in the Community.  

The NDIS is here to help all Australians, but not everybody is comfortable working with places like government agencies. If you've experienced discrimination in that environment in the past, it's understandable you'd be reluctant to go there again.

One of the groups who faced generations of discrimination in Australia are the LGBTIQ+ community. To make sure our services are welcoming and accessible to everybody, Carers Queensland's now has a new way to get in touch.

During World Pride celebrations, we launched a new email address – rainbow@carersqld.com.au – that connects you with a Rainbow Responder. They're Carers Queensland staff who are themselves LGBTIQ+ and can support your enquiry from a place of lived experience and compassion.

To find out more about sitting at the intersection of the rainbow community and the disability community, we caught up for a chat with Tim Lachlan. Tim's neurodivergent, Queer, and uses a wheelchair. He says the new Rainbow Responders are a step in the right direction.

01:55 Tim Lachlan: Historically queer people, LGBTIQ+, there's always been a bit of distrust of government departments, because of the history. So I think moving forward it's essential that government departments make it known that they are actively working to move away from that image and actually support people.

It's not a case of like segregation or anything, but making sure that people know that they have supports that aren't going to be judgmental of intersectionality, and making sure that people feel comfortable, I guess, mentioning that they might be in a same sex relationship or something when having their planning meetings.

Something that is long overdue in making sure that queer people can feel safe and supported, and good to see that we're moving in that direction.

02:48 Fiona Stutz: And have you seen that happening with the NDIA or with Carers Queensland so far?

02:54 Tim: Sort of. Like, what I've seen, it's been positive. I'm not very in this space, like, I'm a queer person, I'm disabled, but I'm not really in the queer space too much. But from what I've seen in making those efforts to say that places are inclusive, that there's genuine training going on for staff so they understand terminology, I guess how to be supportive and understand how intersectionality can influence a person's life and the supports they might need.

03:23 Voiceover: It's not just about awareness, but representation and lived experience as well. That means employing people with disability, people from different cultural backgrounds and people from across the LGBTIQ+ spectrum – something Carers Queensland takes very seriously.

03:40 Tim: Inclusion and equity, we need to have more people with disabilities and queer people being employed. So that way, I guess, the end users can see that the organisation practices what it preaches and employs people from these different intersectional groups.

And from an end user point of view, if you can see somebody in the organisation who resembles yourself, it makes you much more likely to trust that organisation. It makes it easier to build rapport with the person who's helping out with your NDIS stuff.

So yeah, it's good that we've recognized that there is intersectionality, in that we've got people with disability who are LGBTIQ+. But also I think working with the LGBTIQ+ community in general, because, although I haven't been to many Pride events, but speaking to other disabled queer people who have been, they say a lot of those sort of events aren't accessible.

So I think to have initiatives where we're making sure not only are we providing safe access routes to the NDIS for queer people, but also making the community a bit more accessible and safe. So people who are disabled and queer can go into queer spaces and know that they can physically access the place, and that they'll be welcome and not judged based on disabilities.

I'd like to see an effort where normalising disability in queer spaces and creating means, whether it's through physical access or social change, to make sure that everyone can come together and celebrate their identity. Really with anything in society regarding like social change, it's not an overnight process. I would say things are better than what they were five years ago, but yes, it's still a slow process.

And then to broaden that out to the non-disabled community as well, in queer spaces to make sure that Pride events are accessible, inclusive, and all that. And also just, like, working with LGBTIQ+ organisations to ensure that they've got accessibility in bits and pieces.

I guess from my experience, the biggest barrier to getting into any sort of queer spaces is physical access, if your disability is a physical one. But also just I think awareness of, like, neurodiversity. Because I've seen that neurodiversity and being queer, often they play into each other. A lot of queer people are neurodiverse. So I think having channels where people know disability and LGBTIQ+, and understand that's all part of what makes up a person, and having places where people can go and feel welcome. Yeah.

06:32 Voiceover: Tim’s just finished his qualifications as an occupational therapist. He's already been using his wheelchair motocross skills to teach other wheelchair users tricks to get around access barriers, like hopping over curbs. Bringing together that professional knowledge and practical experience is the focus of Tim's plans now.

06:50 Tim: My hopes are to get into the sports area of occupational therapy. So with my background in wheelchair skating, I taught myself how to script skate chairs and I've taught myself how to manufacture them and stuff. So I've got a fair amount of transferable skills in that space. So I feel it would best for me to move into a sports space, where I can help facilitate disabled people’s participation in sports, whether they've got physical disability or cognitive neurodiverse.

Really just using a combination of my lived experience and my clinical knowledge to make sure people can get out in their communities, stay active, participate and lead fun, healthy, active lives. So that's really my goal.

07:39 Fiona: That's great., something for you to achieve this year. And what have you been up to with your wheelchair skating at the moment?

07:46 Tim: Yeah, I'm in the process of organising a few clinics here and there. At the moment it's myself working with things, but I'm hoping to partner up with Sporting Wheelies. We've had a bit of a chat with their CEO and she's quite keen to get some sort of wheelchair skills program going. So just in the process of drafting up what a program can look like, and then I'll present that back to them and hopefully they'll be happy with it.

08:11 Fiona: That's excellent. You'll get a lot more people hearing about it too, because how do you get the word out there at the moment about your clinics?

08:18 Tim: Just through social media really. When I was finishing my degree, I didn't put too much energy, time, and effort into promoting things. It was mostly just, I’d say “I'm going to skate park this day”, like a promotion thing of when I'm doing it.

But now that I've got a bit more free time up my sleeve, I want to get into planning things much more efficiently and I guess have a few more networks where I can promote it.

And it sort of shows a bit how the times have changed. About, I think it was 2018 or something, I tried to launch an LGBTIQ+ skate initiative. And that was like sort of based off the wheelchair skating I did, but I got a huge amount of backlash from it.

So I unfortunately found out the hard way that a lot of the disability community isn't queer friendly. You know, I was receiving horrible messages saying “why don't you go back to just doing skate stuff? This is for children, why are you indoctrinating people?” Stuff like that. And now I've been successful in making my clinics inclusive, so we've got queer people skating alongside allies and stuff, and it's much more like inclusive environment.

And that's what I really pride myself on now is that my clinics, we can have queer people and non-queer people come together and we are just sharing the same sport and there's no more hate or anything. It's people are supportive of each other. So I guess that's really a testament to when you build something, they will come. So if you create a safe space for people and you get it out there to let them know that this is safe, you are welcome, we'll do our best to accommodate you and make sure that you can feel like you can participate regardless of your background.

I think what people need to know is that those safe spaces exist. And when you find your community that that's really when things start opening up for you, as you realise that there might be a small percentage of people who don't agree with what you do because of your sexual identity or your background or something. But at the end of the day finding people who support you, that's what really matters, because that's why I have hope for the future.

And you know, five years ago things weren't as good as they are now. So hopefully another five, 10 years, I hope that I could potentially start up another offshoot where we have queer-specific classes. But yeah, for now, I'm just happy that we're at a point where everyone can come together regardless of background and just enjoy a common sport together.

10:54 Voiceover: That's occupational therapist and wheelchair motocross rider and fabricator Tim Lachlan.

Carers Queensland's new email address is rainbow@carersqld.com.au to contact one of our Rainbow Responders to support you from a place of safety, experience, an understanding.

Thanks for joining us with Choice and Control, a Carers Queensland podcast. For more information about the National Disability Insurance Scheme or Carers Queensland contact us online at carersqld.com.au. You can call us on 1300 999 636 or head to Facebook and look for Carers Queensland NDIS. 

Mentioned in this episode:

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