Royal Trinity Hospice LGBTQ+ workshops
We were delighted to hear from Emma-Louise Naef, Community Engagement Manager at Royal Trinity Hospice. Here Emma shares her experience of facilitating No Barriers Here workshops for LGBTQ+ people in Lambeth.
Last month we were thrilled to run our first set of workshops, inspired by the work that No Barriers Here has been doing focusing on barriers to palliative care faced by members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Royal Trinity Hospice is proud to be located in Lambeth, the area of the country with the highest recorded proportion of LBG residents. After reading the ‘It’s more than rainbow in receptions’ by No Barriers Here, we aimed to engage with the local community and spark conversations about fears and realities of growing older, living with illness and dying as a person who is LGBTQ+.
We ran three 2 hour workshops in the hospice over a series of evenings, each focussing on a different theme and accompanying art activity. We also tailored the workshop plans to the needs of the group, including a section during the first session to introduce the hospice itself and share some information about palliative and end of life services, printed handouts explaining different funeral options for the second session and even a short history of weaving during the final session. To accompany the ideas expressed during the sessions we provided each of the attendees with a copy of our ‘What Matters To Me’ booklet, a guide and notebook for people wanting to start Advance Care Planning. This meant that if there was anything that people thought of during the session they had somewhere central to store that wish or preference, to be shared with healthcare providers and loved ones after the workshops had concluded.
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive with 100% of attendees either agreeing or strongly agreeing that:
- The sessions helped to gain a better understanding of their own wishes for end of life.
- The sessions helped to gain confidence to speak to others about their wishes for end of life.
- They are now more likely to access Royal Trinity Hospice services for themselves or someone they are close to.
Some key quotes from our feedback forms included:
‘It was good to see first-hand the hospice environment, yes my views have changed.’
‘I enjoyed these sessions very much and learnt about myself’
We look forward to running more workshops in future with a variety of local people, so watch this space!
