New tool for families dealing with coming out

LGBTI community group Twenty10 is seeking support for a new project to create an online resource to support families when someone comes out.

The idea is to create the Twenty10 Families Project; an online environment where families can share their thoughts, ideas and stories about coming out experiences.

Developer Lend Lease has also contributed $5000 towards funding for the project.

A recent study out of the US-based Family Acceptance Project showed that young queer people rejected by their families have suicide attempt rates eight times higher than their straight peers.

“This is by far the most alarming statistic in the report, but that depression, use of illicit drugs and taking sexual risks are all somewhere between six and three times more likely for this group of young people is staggering information, but facts that are borne out by our work here at Twenty10,” said Twenty10 managing director Rebecca Reynolds.

“We recognise that while there are some resources out there for families, they tend to come from a place of ‘authority’, approaching family responses through a health lens, as something to be fixed once it’s broken.

“We tend to find it more useful to think that families are at certain stages of their own story, and that there are more chapters after the one they are on now. And instead of telling families what to do, we’d love for families to share heir own stories and the things that worked for them with each other.”

Reynolds said the idea was the resource would be available for anonymous access to families seeking advice directly from other families who had been through similar experiences.

“What we’d love is to create a resource that can be anonymously accessed by families over the web that contains advice directly from other families that are already on the path of growing around the disclosure from one of their own”, she said.

INFO: twenty10.org.au