Minutes: Annual General Meeting

Wednesday 13th December 2006 at the Pilgrim Centre, Regent Circus

Present

Cllr Doreen Dart, Helen, Chris, Ken, Paul, Julie, Cllr Philip Sharp, Doug, Rita Glen-Gallo SBC, Lin Williams SBC, James Waterhouse, Chris Sivers SBC, Kati Wood SBC, Kathleen Daley SBC

1. Apologies

Mark Castle, Cllrs Bluh, Wakefield, Perkins, Foley, Dilys Huggins

2. Election of Chair and Vice Chair

Voting took place and Paul Gregory was elected as Chair and Helen Thompson was elected as Vice Chair.

Paul thanked Helen for everything she had done for the Coalition during her time as Chair and said he would be very glad to have her experience and support as Vice Chair.

Paul was congratulated on his election as Chair.

3. Minutes of last Annual General Meeting – 9 February 2005

These were agreed as a true record.

Matters arising:
Item 2: The suggestion was made that the LGBT could advertise in Swindon News as the cost is free, is this possible? Yes they can.

4. Annual Report 2005/6

There were no questions raised on the annual report.

5. Motion to Change Time of Meetings

It had been agreed at the October Meeting that the motion to change the start time of regular meetings from 7pm to 6pm would be proposed at this meeting.

Doug seconded this motion and the motion was carried. Meetings would in future be held from 6-8pm.

6. Guest Speaker – Lin Williams, Domestic Violence Co-ordinator

Donna Stevens from the Terence Higgins Trust had been due to speak but she was ill and unable to attend. Lin Williams had very kindly stepped in at very short notice to speak about her work.

Lin said she had been in Swindon for three months and before that had worked in Shropshire for 5 years. Prior to that she had been a Community Development Worker in Telford an area very like Swindon.

Lin worked with Agencies and Organisations across Swindon that dealt with Domestic Violence. One in four women, one in six men and over one million children would experience domestic violence in England this year.

People thought it only happened in poorer families but it happened right across society and there was still a lot of stigma attached and many victims did not report it and if you were LGBT it was doubly hard to report. Lin gave out details of an organisation that did offer help to LGBT called Broken Rainbow but said there was nothing available locally.

Services for the LGBT Community are very limited and there was a lot of misunderstanding about circles of abuse. Refuges are open to everyone but women in same sex relationships might not be safe as a partner could gain access.

There is a Domestic Violence Forum in Swindon and Lin invited someone from the Coalition to become a representative on that. She said she would like people from the Coalition to work with her on producing literature that could go out across the town.

Helen asked if Lin had been in touch with Broken Rainbow and Lin said she had and would pass on information and leaflets from them.

Rita asked how people were reported to Lin and she confirmed this was through the Police and the Refuge.

Paul advised that a survey about violence in same sex relationships had been published.

Paul thanked Lin.

7. Guest Speaker – Julie Swain, Pride Youth

Julie circulated copies of Pride Youth’s Annual Report that explained who they were and what they did. She said she had been working for Pride Youth in some capacity for 3¼-4 years.

Pride Youth had been a registered charity for two years and been going for about 13 years. It came about through a lack of mainstream services for LGBT kids. It was the only youth group in Wiltshire for young LGBT and there were very few in the Country and most of those were in big cities. Most young kids were out there on their own without support.

Julie said they provided services of support and guidance for young LGBT from 13-21 years of age in the Swindon area, based on national youth work curriculum. They were tying to use education to raise self-confidence and self-esteem. Their service was young person led and they tried to provide what the young people wanted in such a way that it seemed like fun while they were teaching them life skills.

They had tried to be a bit more political and recently had an art exhibition to promote awareness of homophobia and how it hurts the individual. They had provided sexual awareness sessions to 13/14 year olds at Commonweal School and had been invited on the Healthy Schools Alliance and tried to make the service more holistic by bringing on board teachers and parents.

Julie said the reason they were doing this work was because changes in legislation were not enough, there had to be a change in culture. Heterosexualism was promoted everywhere and there were no positive images for gay people making it difficult for them to come to terms with being gay. Most of their young people didn’t know any young gay people outside of Pride Youth, if it was ok to ‘come out’ why were they hiding it? There was a high incidence of drug misuse and alcoholism in young gay people and they had tried to get into schools and talk to young people there. Homophobic bullying could lead to truancy and even suicide and in adulthood it could lead to mental health problems and the need to seek psychiatric help. They did the work because there was an absolute need to do it.

How did they know that it made a difference? They were receiving more and more enquiries from parents, health visitors and social services but as yet not from teachers. Julie then spoke about some case studies they had dealt with.

One of their present challenges was the loss of the very good support they had received in the past from Swindon Borough Council Youth Service. They existed on a ‘shoestring’ running round trying to find funding and also struggling to find volunteers, as they never had enough. They had a small hard working Management Committee who had their own careers. Julie was the only paid worker, 10 hours per week, trying to do quite a lot of work with very little funding.

Being in the voluntary sector they were unable to attract good quality youth workers because of the uncertainty of how long the work would last. Premises were another real issue as they had in the past had a nice large room where they could put up posters etc. They now had to share a small coffee bar area with other youth groups and with no confidentiality and this was a real issue for them.

Julie suggested the Coalition could help by:

• Talking to people about Pride Youth, within and outside the gay community.
• Lobbying the Council on behalf of Pride Youth, saying what good work they did and asking for more support for them.
• Signposting young gay people to them

Paul thanked Julie.

8. Any Other Business

• Holocaust Memorial Day – 27 January 2007 and Helen hoped the Coalition would be able to take part.
• Helen advised that the owner of the Mailcoach had reopened the Cricketers as a gay venue.
• Paul said for the next meeting he would like to review the Terms of Reference and get membership up so we could have an influence on Swindon Borough Council policy. He felt we also needed to do a lot more work with the other Coalitions and partner organisations such as Pride Youth.