Affirming Across Identities: Building connection through Neurodiversity, LGBTQIA+, and cultural inclusion

You’ve worked with a client whose way of communicating didn’t match what the textbooks described, or sat with a family whose values, language and expectations looked different to your own, and felt the gap between what you were taught to do and what this person actually needed from you. That gap isn’t a sign you’re getting it wrong. It’s an invitation to get curious, and when you start looking at identity, culture and communication together, the way you connect with clients and families begins to shift.

Here’s what comes up for so many of us:

• How do you support social communication without teaching someone to mask who they are?
• How do you create a space where a client feels safe to explore and express their identity, both in the therapy room and beyond it?
• How do you work alongside a family whose culture, language and expectations differ from yours, without falling back on assumptions or stereotypes?
• How do you hold several parts of a person’s identity at once, when each one shapes how they communicate, connect and access support?

If these questions have been sitting with you, this session is for you.

Bringing it all together

The workshop brings these perspectives together to explore how identity, culture, communication and systems interact. You’ll be encouraged to reflect on your own assumptions, consider whose needs are being prioritised, and identify practical strategies for creating more inclusive and affirming clinical and workplace environments.

This webinar is for allied health therapists, including speech pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists and other allied health professionals, who work with neurodivergent clients and their families, whether in private practice, schools, community settings or larger organisations.

It’s for clinicians who already know that affirming practice goes deeper than the right terminology, and who want to understand how the many parts of a person’s identity shape the way they communicate, connect and move through the systems around them.

It’s for you if you’ve ever thought:

If that sounds familiar, you’ll find a lot here to reflect on and take back into your practice. Educators, practice owners and team leaders who shape clinical and workplace environments will also find plenty to take from it.

• You’ve worked with a client or family whose experience didn’t fit neatly into what you were taught, and you’ve wondered what you were missing.
• You want to support authentic communication and participation, rather than teaching people to conform or mask to fit in.
• You want to create a space where clients of every identity feel safe to show up as themselves, in your therapy room and in the systems around them.
• You work with culturally diverse families and want to approach each one with curiosity, rather than assumptions about what their culture means.
• You’re ready to look honestly at your own assumptions and consider whose needs are being prioritised in your practice.
• And you want practical strategies for your clinical and workplace environments, not just another way of thinking about the problem.

If that’s where you are, this webinar is for you.