For a quarter of a century, the Gay and Lesbian Welfare Association (GLWA) has been providing a friendly ear to queer Queenslanders. Peter Hackney reports.

In 1984, Queensland was in the grip of ultra-conservative, homo-hating premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Male homosexuality was illegal, and the government even toyed with the idea of criminalising lesbianism! But in this nefarious atmosphere, there were a few causes for hope. One of them being the Homosexual Community Welfare Community Service, which began a telephone support, referral and information service to queer Queenslanders.

Now known as the Gay and Lesbian Welfare Association (GLWA), the organisation has been providing telephone counselling to our community for 25 years, and in December last year it celebrated the milestone with a party at the offices of the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities (QAHC), where its telephone counselling service is based.

The needs and issues of LGBT Queenslanders have changed over the past quarter century – but some things haven’t changed, explains GLWA Male Co-convenor Mark O Connell.

“There are always people ‘coming out’, there are still people who are isolated, there are still people who don’t have someone they can talk to openly and honestly,” O Connell tells Queensland Pride.

GLWA helps people in all these scenarios, and more, from 7pm to 10pm every night of the year. The counselling provided isn’t anything too complicated – but to isolated queers, or LGBT people who just need another take on things, it can be a lifesaver.

“We don’t pretend to be psychologists or professional counsellors,” says O Connell. “All our counsellors do a comprehensive training course, but we’re not professionals in the vocational sense. What we do, though, is listen and give people a place to explore options and solutions – and that’s very important to someone who doesn’t have anyone else to talk to.

“I think it’s especially important for young people, people who live in rural and regional areas, and older people, especially those who live alone. But we get clients from all walks of life – we even get heterosexuals calling who just want advice on how they can be supportive to a friend or family member who’s come out!”

And it’s not just counselling that GLWA provides. All GLWA counsellors have a wealth of information and referrals at their fingertips that they can pass onto clients.

“One of our main roles is actually just referring people onto appropriate services,” says O Connell. “Someone might want to know if there’s a bushwalking group for gays and lesbians; someone from a religious background might be struggling with finding an accepting church. We make all sorts of referrals.”

But these services are only possible via wider community assistance – and the two main ways to help are donating to GLWA financially or by volunteering your time and skills. Assisting financially is easy: GLWA has an online donation page on its website, where funds can be transferred instantly and securely.

A more time-intensive, but perhaps even more rewarding commitment, can be made by becoming a volunteer to help staff GLWA’s counselling line. GLWA’s training courses run for seven weeks, and consist of one session one night per week, and four all day sessions on Saturdays or Sundays. Upon completion, counsellors generally work the counselling line once every three weeks for a three hour shift.

Says O Connell: “Community support is at the core of everything we do, and the best way anyone could wish us ‘Happy Birthday’ is by donating a little of their time and resources.”

For more information on how you can help GLWA, visit www.glwa.org.au.

To access GLWA’s confidential telephone counselling service, call (07) 3017 1717 or 1800 184 527 between 7pm and 10pm, seven days.

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