Information for Professionals

The HIV Prevention Service (which Education for Diversity is part of) is the HV prevention organisation for the three Primary Care Trusts of North Hampshire, Mid Hampshire and Backwater Valley and Hart.

An important part of our work is to work in partnership with other organisations to increase awareness of the issues around homophobia and sexuality, to increase accessibility of services and to reduce and challenge prejudice and discrimination.

Why is an HIV prevention organisation interested in prejudice?

The gay community often report that they have experienced a lot of discrimination in their lives. This may come from friends, family, the media or organisations they come in contact with. Sometimes it can be quite overt (we still hear of people who have to leave home after 'coming out') but sometimes it can just be through a conspiracy of silence. For example many gay people tell us that their school sex education made no mention of gay relationships, nor of the needs of gay peoples sexual health needs, and that they left school feeling like an invisible minority. At the same time the word 'gay' is the most often used term of abuse in the school playground, and this can leave a young person thinking about their sexuality feeling devalued and with low self-esteem.

For some gay and lesbian people they can internalise this hatred and discrimination, and this in turn can lead to low self esteem. People with lower self esteem may find it more difficult to negotiate the kind of sex they want, or to be assertive in their relationships. They might also feel that they do not have rights as gay and lesbian people and are not entitled to ask to access the services they require.

To ensure this is not the case we aim to work with others to identify the needs of the local gay community, and explore ways in which working practices can meet those needs, as well as the agency's needs.

More specialised information is available for youth workers, teachers, school nurses and connexions personal advisors, by following links. If non of these covers your role, then read on...

We can offer

We are funded to work with and for gay men, as this is one of the groups most affected by HIV. However in our strategic work we are keen to meet the needs of the whole GLB (gay, lesbian, bisexual) community and cover the whole range of issues for both women and men where we can. We ca offer a whole range of services an training these include:

• Training on addressing the needs of gay men accessing your service, or a more general package on raising issues of sexuality awareness for staff
• Support or consultancy on developing policy on issues of sexuality
• Support or consultancy on increasing access for gay men.
• For organisations working with young people we can also provide materials for use both with groups of young gay, lesbian and bisexual material and for mixed groups of young people who may want to think about their own attitudes to sexuality

Please contact us to discuss your particular requirements.

Recently we have worked with:

• Hampshire Police
• Hampshire Youth Service
• Brighton Hill Community College
• RASAC (Winchester Rape and Sexual Abuse Counselling Service)
• North Hampshire and Blackwater Valley and Hart School Nurses

In the near future we would like to increase our work in particular with:

• GP's and the primary care team
• Secondary Schools
• Connexions workers
• Offenders and ex-offenders
• Employers and teams of people who work together