Indigenous counsellors better suited

Indigenous counsellors are better suited to work with the Aboriginal
gay and lesbian community, according to an expert at the Inner City Legal Centre.

Tracy Cooley, the Aboriginal Outreach Project Officer from the Inner City Legal Centre in Kings Cross, said it was important to have a “culturally appropriate service.” She said: “There are a lot of Aboriginal people there [in Kings Cross] but they were not interacting with the service. So they wanted the service to be culturally appropriate.”

The Centre created Cooley’s position five months ago to serve the high
density of Aboriginal population living in Kings Cross.

Before then, the Centre did not have any Aboriginal staff. Despite a group of 50 student volunteers and 80 volunteer lawyers working for the Centre, LGBT members of the Aboriginal community were not keen in using the service.

“Before, (the Centre’s clients) was getting a lot of referrals but people were not actually following up those referrals. And other organisations and other services were referring clients to Inner City Legal Centre but they were not using the service,” Ms Cooley said.

Since its creation, the program has helped the Centre’s clients to resolve issues ranging from Transit Officer fines, discrimination and domestic violence.

Cooley said the government is realising indigenous counsellors for
the AboriginalLGBT community are an improved way to provide services to
those in need.

“The ball is starting to roll in that area,” she said. “They’ve identified that the services are there but employing Aboriginal outreach officers in the community legal centres opens up more doors in giving Aboriginal people access to those services.”

Cooley currently works mostly within Kings Cross, given the Centre’s limited resources. “My job covers the whole state,” she said. “It’ll be nice to eventually get out there to those rural areas because they
don’t have access to services, so it’ll be nice to have those in the future.”