UK: Psychotherapy for LGBT asylum seekers

Image by onkel_wart via Flickr  By Dominic Davies

Pink Therapy, is the UK’s largest independent specialist therapy organisation to work with gender and sexual minority clients.  It runs an extensive training programme of workshops and courses for counsellors, psychotherapists and others in the helping professions who wish to understand more about and work more effectively with the gender and sexual minorities.

On Saturday 13 November 2010, Pink Therapy has invited Lucy Kralj the lead clinician at the Helen Bamber Foundation, one of the lead bodies for working with survivors of persecution and torture to present a training workshop on working LGBT asylum seekers and refugees.  The workshop will take place in Central London from 1pm - 7pm allowing day travel from most of the UK. Click here for full details.

Workshop fee is £120. There may be limited low cost bursaries for volunteer counsellors working within LGBT counselling agencies or with LGBT asylum seekers.

To our knowledge this is the first time the specific psychotherapeutic needs of LGBT asylum seekers and refugees have been addressed and the workshop is open to counsellors, psychologists and psychotherapists working in a range of theoretic models and we hope to encourage therapists from around the UK to attend the workshop.  There are some specific mental health needs and social contexts which leads us to feel therapists will benefit from some specific training in this area.

Pink Therapy was also recently asked by Jill Power of the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group to help provide some therapeutic group work for LGBT asylum seekers and refugees and we have found a pool of therapists willing to get involved in such work and have worked with Outcome - Islington MIND’s LGBT mental health project who have agreed to manage such a project and provide a pilot project in therapeutic group work as well as  offer their daycare support project to LGBT asylum seekers with mental health support needs.