Introduction

In Australia, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Gender Diverse, and Queer (LGBTQ) people experience intimate partner violence (IPV) at comparable or elevated rates relative to the general population (Victorian Agency for Health Information, 2020). IPV is associated with significant morbidity, prospective mental health concerns (Reuter et al., 2017), substantial injury (Sutter et al., 2019), future disability (Rosenblatt et al., 2019) and even loss of life (AbiNader, Graham & Kafka, 2023). IPV that is experienced as men’s violence against women constitutes a pressing public health concern, prompting state (Satyen et al., 2021) and federal (Day, Ross & Polaschek, 2021) governments in Australia to bolster IPV research, primary prevention, and service provision in past decades. Gaps in service provision persist across jurisdictions, with scholars noting a lack of culturally competent care optimized for LGBTQ victim-survivors (Bermea et al., 2019).

Research traces these gaps (Cannon & Buttell, 2020; Kulkarni, 2019) to the invisibilization (Cannon, 2015) of LGBTQ IPV within hegemonic public discourses and cultural narratives surrounding IPV (e.g., as perpetrated by cisgender, heterosexual men against their partners). LGBTQ victim-survivors are consequently overlooked within policy and service contexts, and left to rely on inconsistently helpful informal (Santoniccolo, Trombetta, Rollè, 2023), and/or professionalized support ill-fitted to their unique needs (Barros, Sani & Santos, 2019). Past research has highlighted a unique profile of needs for LGBTQ + victim-survivors which stem from the various, unique contributors to IPV such as societal and internalized transphobia (Tabler et al., 2023; Messinger, Kurdyla & Guadalupe-Diaz, 2022) and homophobia (Badenes-Ribera et al., 2019; Callan et al., 2021). Moreover, the systemic marginalization of LGBTQ identities, individuals and groups are often leveraged by persons to inflict psychological harm on victim-survivors (Woulfe & Goodman, 2021). In Australia, where government funding is indispensable to facilitating IPV service provision, this lack of recognition within policy contexts has severe repercussions that inform a subsequent lack of inclusive services within this context (Lusby et al., 2022, 2023). LGBTQ victim-survivors are therefore often left with little recourse but to draw upon non-optimal sources of professionalized support. This is a potentially retraumatizing experience, particularly where discriminatory or exclusionary attitudes are encountered within service interactions (Lim et al., 2023; Scheer and Baams, 2021).

IPV scholars and practitioners have therefore articulated the urgent need to develop and implement education and training that enables ‘mainstream’ service providers to render inclusive and emotionally safe care for LGBTQ victim-survivors (Subirana-Malaret, Gahagan & Parker, 2019; Kim & Schmuhl, 2021). While a growing body of literature documents the gaps in inclusive service provision, less attention is afforded to how such improvements might be achievedFootnote 1 (Dolan & Conroy, 2021). Concurrently, a scholarly understanding of the factors inhibiting inclusive service implementation is largely nascent.

The current paper utilizes data from a multi-phase project which investigated the provision of LGBTQ-inclusive family, domestic and sexual violenceFootnote 2 (FDSV) services from the perspectives of mainstream and LGBTIQ community-led service providers and LGBTQ victim-survivors. Synthesizing stakeholder insights from 21 key personnel working across N = 11 general population organizations, N = 12 community-led organizations and N = 8 cross-sector advisory or convening organizations, this brief report aims to examine the structural conditions necessary to foster the development of LGBTQ-inclusive IPV service provision.

Methods

Recruitment and Data Collection

In 2021, e-mails were sent to 24 FDSV service organizations that were recommended by FDSV and LGBTIQ sector leaders across Australia. A total of 19 organizations agreed to participate and nominated key personnel to participate in semi-structured interviews exploring the logistical, political, and relational challenges associated with LGBTQ-inclusive service provision. No renumeration was offered for participation in this study to either the participants or their affiliated organizations.

Interviews centered around participant organizations’ operational histories, trajectories toward pursuing inclusive service provision, current operational scope, as well as their hopes and aspirations for the service sector. Participants were asked questions like: “What do you consider the key innovations, supports or resources in your state or territory that you think have helped strengthen service provision for LGBTIQ people experiencing violence?” and “What do you think are the key service gaps or sector system issues in your state or territory?”.

Seventeen one-one-one, and 2 two-on-oneFootnote 3 semi-structured interviews spanning 25–60 min were conducted with a total of 21 participants through video-conferencing software. A total of 31 ongoing organization affiliations was recorded across all participants. Other forms of data generated through these interviews were field notes curated by the second author which summarized the interview, and contextualized it with the author’s reflections on the interview, as well as participants’ demographic characteristics, professional history, and relevant developments in their organizations. Institutional ethics approval was granted for this study by [UNIVERSITY ETHICS BOARD ANONYMIZED].

Data Analysis

Audio recordings of these interviews were transcribed with the use of a paid service, and uploaded onto NVivo 12.0 where the first and second authors manually coded each transcription using a preliminary coding framework. This was developed through (i) field notes, (ii) existing literature and (iii) the authors’ prior research experience. Initial iterations of this coding framework consisted of a mix of a priori codes derived from the literature, as well as semantic codes derived from the transcripts themselves. As more transcripts were analyzed, this framework expanded in both complexity, scope, and refinement in a reiterative process that continued until the conclusion of the data collection phase. Once all transcripts were collected, axial coding was also undertaken to identify both dominant codes, as well as thematic linkages between codes. Coding saturation was reached after the 11th interview, but meaning saturation would not occur until the 17th interview (Hennink, Kaiser & Marconi, 2017). Data collection continued beyond the point of data saturation for the purposes of capturing a diversity of viewpoints, and to ensure that both coding and meaning saturation were reached.

The finalized coding framework comprised 13 parent codes and 27 sub-codes, which related to a mix of both semantic and latent codes. The first and second authors used this framework in line-by-line coding, and each transcript was also analyzed using a thematic framework approach which identified key thematic similarities across all interviews. Once the authors had independently coded each transcript, these were collaboratively reviewed to ensure appropriate code application, as well as to resolve disagreements in code assignments. The last author was recruited as a tiebreaker in disagreements in code assignment which could not be resolved between the first two authors.

Participant Characteristics

Participants reported both singular and/or multiple organizational affiliations broadly categorized into: (i) General population or women-only FDSV services (N = 11), (ii) LGBTQ community-led organizations (N = 12) and/or (iii) Sector-wide advisory or convening organizations (N = 8). Participants’ occupational experiences spanned managerial, advocacy and clinician roles in refuge accommodation, counselling, primary prevention, advocacy, homelessness support, mental health and alcohol or other drug use services. All participants and their workplaces are referred to using pseudonyms.

Results

Participants’ reflections related to a range of organizations at various points in their journeys toward LGBTQ-inclusive service capabilities, ranging from organizations where significant progress had been made towards developing LGBTQ-inclusive practice and others where such capabilities were nascent. Three broad themes emerged: (i) Resistance from both internal and external sources around inclusive practice, (ii) Appropriate resourcing to accommodate service infrastructure and capacity needs, and (ii) Political will and LGBTIQ visibility within official policy.

Resistance Against Developing Inclusive Practice

Resistance towards diversifying service provision was encountered from both government actors, as well as colleagues within the service sector and individual service organizations – sometimes simultaneously. Participants often located this pushback within broader structural discriminations against LGBTQ communities. Indeed, a minority of participants reported individual actors within these contexts who held identifiably discriminatory or exclusionary attitudes towards LGBTQ individuals. This resistance ranged in expression from generalized discomfort among service staff stemming from unfamiliarity with service provision to LGBTQ populations, organizational upheaval, and vocal objections from the broader community via critical social media commentary.

Participants also described a common theme wherein reticent individuals and parties positioned LGBTQ inclusion as compromising or undermining the seminal contribution of feminist ideologies to FDSV advocacy within Australia.

I think there are women out there who feel like women have fought incredibly hard to get to the place where they have to provide services for women, and feel really threatened by changing that, that that somehow dilutes the work that’s happened or that the safe space has been created for women on the back of [advocating against] patriarchal violence -Genevieve, Senior Manager, LGBTQ Community-Led health Organization.

Seen above, that funding and other forms of resourcing are fundamentally finite within these service environments seemingly underscores a zero-sum mentality wherein the inclusion and recognition of other minority groups’ experiences of IPV was sometimes seen as detracting from the resources allocated to (presumed cisgender, heterosexual) women.

These objections were sometimes also ideologically driven; participants noted that polarized opinion surrounding the expansion of service provision within women-only organizations to include trans women appeared to underpin a broader rejection of LGBTQ inclusion. Notable here are significant overlaps with the recent prominence of trans-exclusionary radical feminism (so-called ‘gender critical feminism) (Boe, Jordan & Ellis, 2021) within public discourse. These worldviews hold gender as inextricable from biological sex, and asymmetric power relations as biologically ingrained. Trans women and cisgender men’s exclusion from services catering predominately to women are therefore viewed as necessary for ensuring the latter group’s emotional safety and comfort (Phipps, 2016; Calton et al., 2016).

There was a perception from participants that individual service workers also sometimes implicitly held heteronormative and/or cisnormative beliefs that unintentionally alienated LGBTQ clients. A small number of participants also described how efforts to implement inclusive services could bring the explicitly held biases of individual staff members to the fore. While participants did not describe this as impacting service interactions with LGBTQ clients, this nevertheless points to the enduring harms inflicted on both clients and the organization’s reputation (Lim et al., 2023; Lusby et al., 2023) alike by individuals acting in bad faith. These harms were further proportional to individuals’ position within the organizational hierarchy.

[Organization Name] used to work exceptionally well with trans women, then they got a new CEO who did not care for trans women […] they had one person who just didn’t give a shit about trans women, wasn’t very welcoming, created a whole culture of not being very welcoming and they lost all of their trans clients.

-Kierran, Associate Director, LGBTQ Community-Led health Organization.

Successfully anticipation, planned mitigation and management of resistance was an indispensable component of inclusive practice, frequently entailing efforts directed towards public education and conflict resolution with dissenting individuals – a process which naturally placed significant demands upon available resourcing.

Resourcing Constraints and Competing Demands

Both available time and monetary resources were identified as perennial factors limiting the acquisition of LGBTQ-specialized capabilities and subsequent dispensation of related services, even where such efforts were buttressed by political and organizational will. For general population services operating at capacity, service scope diversification was sometimes perceived by detractors within either community or the organization itself as impossible or ill-advised. Objections to developing LGBTQ-specialized expertise were sometimes therefore linked to reasonable concerns about resourcing constraints:

[Many organizations seem to think] ‘We can’t meet the existing need; why would we go out looking for more [clients]?’

-Janu, manager, women’s refuge, and LGBTQ family violence interagency group coordinator.

Herein, inclusive service practices are viewed as ancillary, rather than a core component of service provision. For organizations operating across multiple service domains, expansions in IPV-related services were often necessitated by sheer demand, but seldom supplemented by appropriate resourcing. As a result, previously earmarked resources were often reallocated away from other service functions:

There’s a bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul, you know; it addresses [an] immediate need, but it’s problematic in that it doesn’t allow real funding needs to [become evident].

-Michael, senior manager, LGBTIQ community-controlled health organization.

While these resourcing strategies were indispensable for meeting service demand in a timely manner, funding entities were perceived to misconstrue their success as indicative of appropriate resourcing. Participants like Erin echoed this concern, stating:

[We sometimes approach them saying] ‘this is the work we’re doing for free – pay us.’ Sometimes funders go, ‘Well, you’re doing it for free; why would we pay you?

- Erin, LGBTIQ family violence consultant, multiple organizations.

These arrangements were ultimately unsustainable long-term, with participants citing their impact upon staff workload, and ensuing strain on other service dimensions. Similar resourcing tensions between competing demands were noted within organizations where inclusive service implementation expanded upon extant women’s or general population service capabilities. This service diversification often invited resistance from detractors within the service, who interpreted this dilation in service scope as implicitly compromising service provision to other client populations.

Though funding availability was highly variable across the examined jurisdictions, participant consensus was that resourcing needs were not well-understood and significantly underestimated by funding bodies.

[The state government allocated] $260,000 total to train the entirety of [our state], and that was left up to one person at [LGBTIQ community-controlled organization] to organize facilitation for an entire state […] it was literally just training individuals. So once that person moved on from a service, you’ve lost [their expertise entirely].

- Owen, FDSV service worker and LGBTIQ family violence interagency group member.

These suboptimal funding arrangements were commonly attributed to funders’ lower prioritization of service provision to a ‘niche’ population, meaning that funding tended to be apportioned in small, token quantities. This was amplified by the largely provisional nature of most available funding arrangements. Service organizations generally appeared to receive funding in amounts intended to cover operational costs for a short duration – generally seldom exceeding 12 months. More commonly, participants described having to piece together multiple, individually insufficient sources of funding, diverting much-needed staff capacity towards income generation, and potentiated longer-term consequences:

It’s governments throwing some bits of funding to organizations and trying to keep things sweet really, and not funding them properly across different parts of sectors […] you end up having individual champions or advocates or experts who develop a lot of knowledge and connections and actually get really good traction and then the funding runs out and then they move elsewhere- Sabine, CEO, Women’s/general population family violence service.

Uniquely, participants were able to provide an estimation of how adequate resourcing might facilitate improvements to service provision. Due to the expectation that Covid-19 lockdowns would exacerbate the factors associated with IPV (Buttell & Ferreira, 2020), one-off amounts were provided to most participants’ organizations in anticipation of resulting upticks in service demand. This temporary infusion of funds was typically used by participant organizations to engage additional staff members to bolster operational capacity and to provide clients with a more robust range of services.

We have a second counselling position at the moment that’s been funded through Covid [relief funds]. Hoping that we can keep her because they’re both at full capacity with waiting lists, and they not only support the people who are in our shelter and transitional housing, but they can provide ongoing support or support to people in the community always understanding that crisis clients take preference.

- Tegan, Senior Manager, Specialist Family Violence Counselling Service.

These circumstances provided a natural experiment that temporarily and partially alleviated resourcing constraints for several organizations. Participants described their frustration that these operationally vital but ordinarily unaffordable additions to their teams – typically, case managers, domestic violence workers and counsellors – could not be retained beyond the duration enabled by Covid-19-related funding.

Political will and Recognition Within Government Policy

Recognition of LGBTQ communities’ experiences of IPV is now enshrined within policy frameworks at both the state (State Government of Victoria, 2017; State Government of New South Wales, 2022; Northern Territory Government 2018; State Government of Queensland, 2016; Douglas et al., 2018) and federal (Australian Government Department of Social Services, 2011) levels. Participants noted how even perfunctory recognition within policy frameworks attenuated resistance against developing inclusive practice and was a necessary precursor to investment in LGBTQ-specific IPV services. Articulating their perceptions of the shifting zeitgeist within both the local sector and community, several participants noted how broader social acceptance towards LGBTQ identities and individuals seemingly informed the belief in many segments of the professional sector that inclusive service provision was a moral imperative.

However, this has not necessarily translated to noticeable improvements in the availability or accessibility of inclusive services, due to a lack of actionable planning (Lusby et al., 2022). That these policy and practice frameworks dictated the availability of funding, - itself cited as a key limiting factor to service provision - essentially meant that the availability of inclusive services was ultimately dependent upon policymakers. Therefore, what was sometimes perceived as inadequate recognition of LGBTQ communities and victim-survivors within such frameworks appeared to underpin the provisionary resourcing of LGBTQ-inclusive services. Participants noted a historic apathy toward LGBTQ inclusion among policymakers, and perceived policy recognition as a slow and incremental process. Participants further described colleagues’ perceptions that in recognizing LGBTQ individuals’ experiences of abuse within policy, the sector was liable to lose sight of the gendered drivers and contours of men’s violence against women. Participants roundly refuted such allegations, pointing to innovations to policy and practice that stemmed from thinking holistically about inclusive services:

In fact, the feminist system and the response that they have to family violence is only strengthened by the addition of inclusion and diversity into that kind of narrative, not diluted-Genevieve, Senior Manager, LGBTIQ community-controlled health organization.

As we discuss in a forthcoming publication (Author’s Own, Forthcoming), political inaction was often further justified by the assertion that extant evidence was insufficient to justify expanding services to LGBTQ victim-survivors.

Even in jurisdictions where sociopolitical conditions were more amenable to LGBTQ inclusion within policy, the nascency of inclusive understandings of FDSV often appeared to hide the true extent of service gaps within these contexts. Downstream, these disjoints between policy and service needs precipitated a common scenario wherein service organizations nevertheless rendered services to LGBTQ victim-survivors, despite receiving little to no funding to do so.

[Service name anonymized] is definitely the most proactive in terms of [making sure] their crisis line is open for anyone, but their contractual obligation is for women and their children, in their actual support services.

-Chloe, LGBTIQ Project Officer, non-government social services organization.

Despite this, participants described localized pockets of improvement within some areas of policy design – this ranged from the adoption of inclusive terminology, and recognition of LGBTQ-specific forms of abuse, and LGBTQ individuals as comprising a group of especial concern. This was primarily facilitated by individual, sympathetic policymakers who reliably championed the inclusion of LGBTQ victim-survivors within both state and federal agendas.

It’s individual really good bureaucrats – I can say that with the knowledge of a couple of people within the system, yeah – and that’s the only reason we have this on the National Plan agenda and why we have managed to get [changes in government policy].

-Jade, Manager, LGBTIQ community-controlled and women’s/general population family violence services.

However, this reliance upon individual ‘good actors’ contributed to significant cross-jurisdictional variegation in policy and resourcing. Further, that progress within policy contexts was contingent upon a handful of highly motivated individuals, meant that this momentum was liable to stagnate in their absence.

Discussion

These findings highlight the structural conditions needed to foster LGBTQ-inclusive IPV service provision. While divergent in modality, organizational trajectory and jurisdictional context, participants’ affiliated organizations contended with broadly comparable conditions and factors which undermined the implementation and provision of inclusive services for LGBTQ victim-survivors. Several throughlines ran between these factors; for instance, it was evident that nebulous policy recognition, direction and guidance pertaining to LGBTQ inclusivity predicated both precarious resourcing arrangements, and the de-prioritization of these services. Some participants described remediating strategies that temporarily circumvented these constraints. However, these were seldom longitudinally sustainable and could not address the conditions which demanded said strategies. Participants were nevertheless emboldened by the successes of their own efforts and the progress made thus far and held the unanimous hope that increased institutional recognition and societal attitudes toward LGBTQ individuals would improve both service and social conditions for LGBTQ victim-survivors.

This research adds to a sparsely researched dimension of IPV service provision and elaborates upon the common structural conditions which preface inclusive service provision within Australia. Literature within this domain primarily focuses on the efficacy of specific service models (e.g., Haag et al., 2019; Mennicke et al., 2019; Riel et al., 2016; Antebi-Gruszka, N., & Scheer, 2021), and/or individual service workers’ experiences regarding inclusive service provision (Merken et al., 2023). Our findings suggest that systemic and structural factors play a significant role in determining the availability of inclusive services and point to the potential benefit of further scholarly inquiry in developing jurisdiction- and/or context-specific responses to attenuate these inhibiting factors. These findings emphasize the importance of purposive, ongoing, and collaborative engagement with other organizations similarly involved in inclusive service provision. Given widespread resourcing constraints, collaborative advocacy as well as knowledge- and resource-sharing between organizations within comparable or complementary operational domains are likely indispensable to successfully navigating these conditions.

Several limitations should be noted– firstly, data was collected exclusively from service stakeholders, and firsthand perspectives from both policymakers and funders are absent from the present discussion. Secondly, these exact findings are likely jurisdiction-specific, and while some insights are likely context-agnostic, attempts at generalization must account for the idiosyncrasies of the Australian policy and structural environment.

Conclusion

LGBTQ-inclusive services are an indispensable component of support and recovery for sexual and gender minority victim-survivors. However, entrenched gaps in service coverage persist due to enduring structural and systemic factors. Our findings affirm the role of political advocacy in seeking to improve service access for LGBTQ victim-survivors. They further emphasize the importance of undertaking such activism collectively and collaboratively, ensuring both cogent and sensitive messaging about the value of inclusive service provision, and to avoid scenarios where resources are simply re-directed from one group in significant need to another.