LGBTQ people are, sadly, statistically at higher risk of suicide.

In my experience as a counsellor many LGBTQ clients can be very scared of talking about suicide.

Trans and non-binary clients in particular can fear their counsellor ‘outing’ or misgendering them if their counsellor were to need to break confidentiality.

In this workshop we will work together to think about how societal attitudes and laws have continued to exclude LGBTQ people and how this has made many in the LGBTQ community very wary of professional support.

You will learn practical steps to enable you to contract with clients, paying particular attention to names, pronouns, titles and limits to confidentiality so that you can make your counselling work more inclusive and help LGBTQ clients feel safer to talk to you about suicide.

I will also share additional LGBTQ resources to enable you and your clients to get extra support.

Having completed the Suicide First Aid training in ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) and with a background in working as a mental health advocate, I draw on my experience of talking with clients about suicidal ideation on an almost daily basis.

Join us to help build your confidence in working with suicidal ideation with your LGBTQ clients.

This workshop will be hosted on the Zoom meeting platform where we will use our camera and microphones to interact with each other as a group.

To support practitioners in this time of extraordinary circumstances we are offering access to this group for a self-select fee.

The self-select fee is a radical inclusion policy to open learning for all colleagues. The guide price for this event is £20.00, however, we appreciate that income varies greatly in different locations and circumstances. Please contribute what you can to help us maintain inclusive professional training.

Chloe Foster

I am passionate about training counsellors to enable them to feel more confident working with LGBTQ clients.

As a counsellor in my private practice, Sussex Rainbow Counselling, I specialise primarily in gender and sexual diversity within the LGBTQ communities.

My passion for working in this area began before my counselling career through my work in several LGBTQ organisations. I loved working as an LGBTQ Youth Worker for Allsorts Youth Project and also working for the LGBTQ mental health charity MindOut in Brighton. Later I worked as an LGBTQ Counsellor for Brighton and Hove LGBT Switchboard. Read more about my work in the LGBTQ community here: https://www.sussexrainbowcounselling.com/post/who-am-i-part-3

With a first-class degree in Education I love teaching and training and am proud to have made training an ongoing part of my career since 2003.

I’m also an Accredited Gender, Sex and Relationship Diversities Therapist with Pink Therapy.

Website: www.sussexrainbowcounselling.com

Facebook: Sussex Rainbow Counselling

Twitter: @ChloeCounsellor