AGM 2012 & 25th Anniversary Celebration
Annual General Meeting & 25th Anniversary Celebration
the Stade Hall, Rock a Nore Road, Old Town, Hastings
2.15pm Friday, September 28th 2012
Agenda
2.15 Sign in.
2.30 1. Welcome - Paul Broadhurst, Chair
2. Apologies
3. Minutes of the 2011 AGM – Roger Sweetman, Secretary
4. Accounts – Paul Broadhurst
5. Annual Report – Roger Sweetman
6. Anti-Social Behaviour & Hate Crime – presentation by Laura Torrance
Community Development Worker - Safer From Harm
3.00 Refreshments & Networking
3.20 25th Anniversary Celebration - ‘Changes & Progress During the Helpline’s History’
A Brief History of the Helpline - Roger Sweetman – Founder member
Sussex Police - Chief Inspector Heather Keating
Adult Social Care (ESCC) - Janette Lyman –
Lead role in Engagement & Diversity
Health - Jourdan Durairaj –
Head of Equality & Human Rights
East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
- Adam Churcher –
Equality Impact Assessment & Data Manager - Equality, Diversity & Human Rights Team,
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
LGBT Equalities Forum
- Agencies Working Together - Nick McGlynn – University of Brighton
4.30 Closing address – Paul Broadhurst, Chair
2.30 1. Welcome - Paul Broadhurst, Chair
2. Apologies
3. Minutes of the 2011 AGM – Roger Sweetman, Secretary
4. Accounts – Paul Broadhurst
5. Annual Report – Roger Sweetman
6. Anti-Social Behaviour & Hate Crime – presentation by Laura Torrance
Community Development Worker - Safer From Harm
3.00 Refreshments & Networking
3.20 25th Anniversary Celebration - ‘Changes & Progress During the Helpline’s History’
A Brief History of the Helpline - Roger Sweetman – Founder member
Sussex Police - Chief Inspector Heather Keating
Adult Social Care (ESCC) - Janette Lyman –
Lead role in Engagement & Diversity
Health - Jourdan Durairaj –
Head of Equality & Human Rights
East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
- Adam Churcher –
Equality Impact Assessment & Data Manager - Equality, Diversity & Human Rights Team,
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
LGBT Equalities Forum
- Agencies Working Together - Nick McGlynn – University of Brighton
4.30 Closing address – Paul Broadhurst, Chair
|
This event would not have been possible without a donation received from Hastings Round Table's Beer & Music Festival Fund for which we are very grateful.
|
|
Welcome speech by Paul Broadhurst, Chair of the Helpline
My name is Paul Broadhurst and I’m the recently appointed chair of the Helpline.
This is Roger Sweetman who many of you will know. Roger is now the only founder member remaining and has worked on the Helpline continuously for the last twenty-five years. Roger is both a phone volunteer and our secretary.
Before we begin there’s a safety announcement that I need to make. There isn’t a scheduled test for the fire alarm so if it goes off please leave immediately by the nearest emergency exit. One is at the rear of this room, and there’s another through those doors, at the end of the corridor, past the toilets.
Once you’re out of the building please walk over to the square directly opposite the entrance and we’ll do a roll call to ensure that no one has been left behind. Has everyone signed-in? Good.
I would very much like to welcome you all here this afternoon and to say on behalf of the committee that we are delighted so many people, and many of whom we know have very demanding jobs have managed to find the time to join us on what is a very special day for the Helpline.
A comment made by many of the people who were invited and unable to attend is that they very much wish they could have come because they have seen from the agenda that we have a very impressive range of speakers for which we are very grateful.
We are living as we all know in times of austerity with funding for organisations such as ours now very difficult to obtain, and had it not been for a much-welcome donation from Hastings Round Table’s Beer & Music Festival Fund we wouldn’t be here now.
Any help that we receive is always appreciated, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jorge, one of our members and who is here today, for the free loan of this lectern which is going to prove very useful today.
Because this is such a unique occasion I’m now going say something about the Helpline and what it does before we conduct the business of the AGM.
We’re a voluntary organisation, not a charity, we are completely independent, and for us to have survived so long in a rapidly changing world is a truly remarkable achievement.
There are some people who now question the need for the Helpline’s existence given the significant changes that have taken place since it was established, so let’s consider just a few of those changes.
In some ways we have become more understanding of the needs of other people, less prejudiced, more tolerant, and of course we now have laws banning discrimination and prejudice against people because of their sexuality, but the passing of a law as we all know does not mean that everyone will observe it.
There is no doubt that to declare your sexuality in 2012 can be less daunting than it was in 1987, but hate and prejudice still exists and is far from having been eradicated, if indeed it ever will be. Coming out is still to set yourself up as a potential target for verbal and physical abuse.
Not all calls made to the Helpline are genuine ones. We receive hoax calls, whilst others are abusive, and some are obscene. Just a few days ago we had an obscene call, and it raises the question if people are prepared to say such things during a phone call what might they say for example to someone they meet in a public place?
Homophobia is not always easy to prove, and not everyone feels able for a variety of reasons to report they have been a victim even when it is a crime.
We have a wide-range of people here today, but however different our lives may appear to be they all have one thing in common and it is that life for everyone is a journey of discovery in which we learn through the experiences we have on a daily basis not just about the world we live in, and the other people in it, but about ourselves, about the person that we truly are, which is not always the person we believe ourselves to be.
Crises and adversity, as we all know, can unexpectedly bring out in us both strengths and weaknesses that we never knew we had, but there are some things about ourselves that we never expect to be surprised by, and our sexuality is one of them. It’s a part of who we are and we therefore take it for granted.
A realisation that some of us here today have made is that our sexuality is not what we had once thought it to be. The discovery may have come at a relatively early age or perhaps later in life, and the coming to terms with it will have been more successful for some than for others. There are people who can spend a lifetime struggling and never quite succeed.
We all have many facets to our characters, presenting one image of ourselves to some people and a different one to others. This is especially true of some of our callers and who feel unable because of fears and concerns as to how they may be treated to be totally open about their sexuality with everyone with whom they come in contact.
Some people may conceal it from members of their families, others certain friends, perhaps their neighbours, or people they work with.
The fact that not everyone can have the confidence to say for whatever reason I am what I am, accept me for the person that I am, don’t expect or force me to be someone I am not is surely a condemnation of a society that regards itself as civilised.
However short the struggle may be to comprehend and adjust to the realities that we are presented with when we realise that our true sexuality is not what we have always thought it to be it is never going to be an easy time and can lead to conflicts of emotion and trauma that can be impossible for someone who has not endured them to comprehend.
When we are in need of someone to talk to, to give us help and support it is natural to initially turn to our families and friends, but to come out and say my sexuality is not what you think it is, indeed not what I have always thought it to be, takes a tremendous amount of courage for there is no going back and relationships can be irretrievably destroyed and friendliness can turn in an instant to hostility.
At a time in our lives when we are in desperate need of help and support we can find little forthcoming if indeed any at all from people whom we thought that we could always rely upon, no matter what life may throw at us.
These are times when we need to talk to people about our problems and our feelings who are not going to be merely sympathetic, but who can truly empathise with us, who we know are not going to be judgmental when they hear what we have to say, who, if they should say to us I know what you are going through and how you must be feeling we know are truly sincere, that we can believe them because we know that they have themselves once been in our situation.
Callers to the Helpline know they are going to talk to such a person.
For the last twenty-five years the Helpline has given assistance both to people who have had a variety of problems concerning their sexuality and others who wanted to assist people they knew. We can’t advise people how to cope with their difficulties, but we can and do give information and provide the listening ear that we all need at times, and we direct callers to other organisations when specialist help is required.
In addition to providing a phone service for information, the Helpline has trained volunteers who are able to assist with the process of reporting hate incidents and hate crime.
The fact that the Helpline has been able to provide its services for twenty-five years owes a great deal to the tenacity and determination not to give up however difficult things have sometimes been at times of Roger, who has been very ably assisted for the last twenty years by Lewis, with my own involvement being relatively recent.
From the beginning of this year we have widened the means by which users of our service can contact us, be helped and obtain information, and Roger will be telling you about those changes later in the afternoon. I think it can reasonably be said that we are embracing and making good use of the variety of means of communication that the twenty-first century now offers.
I mentioned earlier that some people question the need for the Helpline to still exist, and so I would like to finish by telling you briefly about an email message that I replied to recently.
It was from a support agency that provided assistance to a young man who is gay, physically disabled and with learning difficulties who had expressed a desperate need to meet people in a similar situation to himself, and we were asked if we could suggest a club or society that he could join.
We have an extensive directory of organisations but I was unable to find anything suitable, so I replied and said that we would make further enquiries which could take some time to be responded to, but if it should prove to be the case that we couldn’t find any club or society at all, which I thought may well be the case considering his situation, that he shouldn’t give up hope of ever meeting other people because the fact that somewhere for him to go now doesn’t mean that it will always be so.
The hope that the future will be better than the present can often be the lifeline we need to make life bearable.
I fortunately did manage to find a centre that this young man could go to that met some of his requirements and I supplied details of it. The reply I received was extremely appreciative, with the help and information I supplied being described as having been invaluable.
If the Helpline didn’t exist would anyone else have tried to help that young man? We will never know, but fortunately it does exist, and I did what the Helpline was created to do and has been doing for twenty-five years, and that is to help people.
I’d like to thank you all for listening, and I’m now going to hand over to Roger.
This is Roger Sweetman who many of you will know. Roger is now the only founder member remaining and has worked on the Helpline continuously for the last twenty-five years. Roger is both a phone volunteer and our secretary.
Before we begin there’s a safety announcement that I need to make. There isn’t a scheduled test for the fire alarm so if it goes off please leave immediately by the nearest emergency exit. One is at the rear of this room, and there’s another through those doors, at the end of the corridor, past the toilets.
Once you’re out of the building please walk over to the square directly opposite the entrance and we’ll do a roll call to ensure that no one has been left behind. Has everyone signed-in? Good.
I would very much like to welcome you all here this afternoon and to say on behalf of the committee that we are delighted so many people, and many of whom we know have very demanding jobs have managed to find the time to join us on what is a very special day for the Helpline.
A comment made by many of the people who were invited and unable to attend is that they very much wish they could have come because they have seen from the agenda that we have a very impressive range of speakers for which we are very grateful.
We are living as we all know in times of austerity with funding for organisations such as ours now very difficult to obtain, and had it not been for a much-welcome donation from Hastings Round Table’s Beer & Music Festival Fund we wouldn’t be here now.
Any help that we receive is always appreciated, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jorge, one of our members and who is here today, for the free loan of this lectern which is going to prove very useful today.
Because this is such a unique occasion I’m now going say something about the Helpline and what it does before we conduct the business of the AGM.
We’re a voluntary organisation, not a charity, we are completely independent, and for us to have survived so long in a rapidly changing world is a truly remarkable achievement.
There are some people who now question the need for the Helpline’s existence given the significant changes that have taken place since it was established, so let’s consider just a few of those changes.
In some ways we have become more understanding of the needs of other people, less prejudiced, more tolerant, and of course we now have laws banning discrimination and prejudice against people because of their sexuality, but the passing of a law as we all know does not mean that everyone will observe it.
There is no doubt that to declare your sexuality in 2012 can be less daunting than it was in 1987, but hate and prejudice still exists and is far from having been eradicated, if indeed it ever will be. Coming out is still to set yourself up as a potential target for verbal and physical abuse.
Not all calls made to the Helpline are genuine ones. We receive hoax calls, whilst others are abusive, and some are obscene. Just a few days ago we had an obscene call, and it raises the question if people are prepared to say such things during a phone call what might they say for example to someone they meet in a public place?
Homophobia is not always easy to prove, and not everyone feels able for a variety of reasons to report they have been a victim even when it is a crime.
We have a wide-range of people here today, but however different our lives may appear to be they all have one thing in common and it is that life for everyone is a journey of discovery in which we learn through the experiences we have on a daily basis not just about the world we live in, and the other people in it, but about ourselves, about the person that we truly are, which is not always the person we believe ourselves to be.
Crises and adversity, as we all know, can unexpectedly bring out in us both strengths and weaknesses that we never knew we had, but there are some things about ourselves that we never expect to be surprised by, and our sexuality is one of them. It’s a part of who we are and we therefore take it for granted.
A realisation that some of us here today have made is that our sexuality is not what we had once thought it to be. The discovery may have come at a relatively early age or perhaps later in life, and the coming to terms with it will have been more successful for some than for others. There are people who can spend a lifetime struggling and never quite succeed.
We all have many facets to our characters, presenting one image of ourselves to some people and a different one to others. This is especially true of some of our callers and who feel unable because of fears and concerns as to how they may be treated to be totally open about their sexuality with everyone with whom they come in contact.
Some people may conceal it from members of their families, others certain friends, perhaps their neighbours, or people they work with.
The fact that not everyone can have the confidence to say for whatever reason I am what I am, accept me for the person that I am, don’t expect or force me to be someone I am not is surely a condemnation of a society that regards itself as civilised.
However short the struggle may be to comprehend and adjust to the realities that we are presented with when we realise that our true sexuality is not what we have always thought it to be it is never going to be an easy time and can lead to conflicts of emotion and trauma that can be impossible for someone who has not endured them to comprehend.
When we are in need of someone to talk to, to give us help and support it is natural to initially turn to our families and friends, but to come out and say my sexuality is not what you think it is, indeed not what I have always thought it to be, takes a tremendous amount of courage for there is no going back and relationships can be irretrievably destroyed and friendliness can turn in an instant to hostility.
At a time in our lives when we are in desperate need of help and support we can find little forthcoming if indeed any at all from people whom we thought that we could always rely upon, no matter what life may throw at us.
These are times when we need to talk to people about our problems and our feelings who are not going to be merely sympathetic, but who can truly empathise with us, who we know are not going to be judgmental when they hear what we have to say, who, if they should say to us I know what you are going through and how you must be feeling we know are truly sincere, that we can believe them because we know that they have themselves once been in our situation.
Callers to the Helpline know they are going to talk to such a person.
For the last twenty-five years the Helpline has given assistance both to people who have had a variety of problems concerning their sexuality and others who wanted to assist people they knew. We can’t advise people how to cope with their difficulties, but we can and do give information and provide the listening ear that we all need at times, and we direct callers to other organisations when specialist help is required.
In addition to providing a phone service for information, the Helpline has trained volunteers who are able to assist with the process of reporting hate incidents and hate crime.
The fact that the Helpline has been able to provide its services for twenty-five years owes a great deal to the tenacity and determination not to give up however difficult things have sometimes been at times of Roger, who has been very ably assisted for the last twenty years by Lewis, with my own involvement being relatively recent.
From the beginning of this year we have widened the means by which users of our service can contact us, be helped and obtain information, and Roger will be telling you about those changes later in the afternoon. I think it can reasonably be said that we are embracing and making good use of the variety of means of communication that the twenty-first century now offers.
I mentioned earlier that some people question the need for the Helpline to still exist, and so I would like to finish by telling you briefly about an email message that I replied to recently.
It was from a support agency that provided assistance to a young man who is gay, physically disabled and with learning difficulties who had expressed a desperate need to meet people in a similar situation to himself, and we were asked if we could suggest a club or society that he could join.
We have an extensive directory of organisations but I was unable to find anything suitable, so I replied and said that we would make further enquiries which could take some time to be responded to, but if it should prove to be the case that we couldn’t find any club or society at all, which I thought may well be the case considering his situation, that he shouldn’t give up hope of ever meeting other people because the fact that somewhere for him to go now doesn’t mean that it will always be so.
The hope that the future will be better than the present can often be the lifeline we need to make life bearable.
I fortunately did manage to find a centre that this young man could go to that met some of his requirements and I supplied details of it. The reply I received was extremely appreciative, with the help and information I supplied being described as having been invaluable.
If the Helpline didn’t exist would anyone else have tried to help that young man? We will never know, but fortunately it does exist, and I did what the Helpline was created to do and has been doing for twenty-five years, and that is to help people.
I’d like to thank you all for listening, and I’m now going to hand over to Roger.
A Brief History of the Helpline
by Roger Sweetman
Secretary & Founder Member
There have been voluntary gay groups in Hastings since 1974 and in 1985 members of the 1066 Gay Community Organisation (known as 1066 GCO) set-up a Gay Caring Group.
In 1987 the Caring group decided that there should be a telephone service with its own separate number, until this time contact numbers were always those of individual members. So this was how Hastings Befrienders was formed. There were ten people at our first meeting and we were fortunate that two of them had been volunteers on a Gay helpline before moving to Hastings.
Hastings Befrienders was able to start operating with small donations from its own members, with a grant from 1066GCO and a donation from a charity event that was put on by the then Councillor Jane Amstad, who I am pleased to say is with us today. Apart from further donations from Jane’s fundraising efforts the Helpline didn’t’ receive any outside funding for several years.
I can still remember our first fund raising event – a progressive dinner party - where each course was eaten in a different member’s home.
Originally the Helpline operated on Friday nights between 8 and 10 pm from a designated telephone in a gay friend’s home with two volunteers on duty and we held business meetings every month. We took our first call soon after we went live on the 24th of July 1987; it was from National Gay Switchboard confirming our number. Our second caller said ‘thank goodness there is a phone line at last’. An opinion people still hold today.
As we operated only on one evening a week, and did not have the funds for an office we were extremely grateful to accept the offer from a supporter to use a separate telephone line in his home. We eventually switched from Friday to Wednesday evenings and from 7pm to 9pm as there were sometimes social activities taking place on Friday evenings and it would be beneficial not only to callers to know about these, the volunteers could also attend.
Advertising the Helpline was not easy but we managed to get an advert in the Friday Ad. At the time there were other gay groups in the south east and they had our details, as did the gay press such as existed at the time. We were an early subscriber to the St Leonards P.O. Box service and were given P. O. Box 6. In the first ten years of the Helpline we received many requests for help and information by post, and one person wrote to us regularly and only last year that person telephoned the Helpline on several occasions.
I took my first call on my first evening on duty on the 14th of August, it was from a young man who wasn’t sure of his sexuality and just wanted to talk to somebody.
We were only a few months old when the infamous and repressive Clause 28 became law and it wasn’t until November 2003 that it was repealed.
We held our first AGM in March 1988 at Hastings Voluntary Services meeting room in Cambridge Gardens and reported we had answered 80 genuine calls. HVS was the forerunner of Hastings Voluntary Action.
AIDS was still very much in the forefront as far as gay men were concerned, and in 1988 some of the volunteers of the Helpline decided something had to be done and got together with local health-workers and HARASS (Hastings & Rother Aid Support Society) was formed, and this subsequently became South East Aids Support.
The Helpline subsequently moved its telephone and shared an office with HARASS but we decided to move on from their premises in Cambridge Gardens as it was expected that a financial contribution would be required from the 1st of September 1993 and we only had £43.25 in the bank. Thankfully a volunteer on the line offered to house the telephone in his home, which was gratefully accepted, and the Helpline was housed there for over 18 years.
In 1993 the Helpline was contacted by a group of local lesbians and for a few years they ran a Lesbian Line on Monday evenings, their first night was the 6th of September, using the same telephone number. Sadly, the number of their volunteers dwindled so the Lesbian Line was short-lived.
Once we were in our new home Lewis investigated unused telephone numbers and then he applied for the number 01424 444777 which was in use until earlier this year when for the convenience of both our volunteers and users we switched to a mobile phone.
In the late 90’s the NHS contacted the Helpline as they believed there was a need for a support group for LGBT people and for gay men in particular. Our small band of volunteers had long realised that a support and social group was needed to help with the well-being of LGBT people and their mental well-being in particular, but with the absence of outside support and a venue this was not possible. To many just knowing there was a Helpline they could telephone was a lifeline. With their support and the funds provided by the NHS we could advertise the Helpline regularly, and with this came the bonus of being able to meet clients, always in two’s, and to provide them with a place where they could meet other people like themselves, should they so wish, and a separate social group was set up in 1999. The first meeting place was the café of St Mary-in-the -Castle.
Funding for the Helpline was received from the NHS via the Terrence Higgins Trust for three years, but we only ever received an amount equal to our expenditure for the previous year so there was never any opportunity to take on new projects.
However, with the backing of the NHS, members of the Helpline and the social group became more confident and began to play an active role in the wider community. The social group was concerned that nothing was being done for LGB & T people locally, and so Steve Manwaring, director of HVA was invited to a meeting to discuss the lack of support for LGB & T people in the town. This led to numerous meetings in which the Helpline volunteers actively participated, this led to the subsequent formation and launch of the Rainbow Alliance in St Mary-in-the-Castle in 2002.
In August 2008 members of the Helpline together with other Lesbians & Gays met with Graham Hill of Victim Support which had obtained the contract for the whole of Sussex for the new hate crime service. The Helpline offered to take calls on homophobic incidents and to assist callers in completing the report form. Several volunteers undertook advocacy training with Victim Support and together with other LGBT advocates from Eastbourne attended quarterly meetings with Victim Support. The Helpline volunteers promoted this work and the general hate crime service provided by Victim Support at the various fora and networks of which they were members.
We obtained funding from the NHS Hastings & Rother Health Improvement Grants & from the Safer Hastings Partnership which enabled us to promote our wider service and flyers were produced. The Hate Crime Service was launched at Bar Blah in St. Leonards in November 2009.
In June 2009 we had started using the title Hastings & Rother Gay Helpline as this more accurately reflected the work that we were doing but it wasn’t until April 2010 that we formally changed our name to the Hastings & Rother Gay Helpline when a new constitution was agreed.
In May 2010 Paul hosted a fund raising event in his garden to commemorate IDAHO – the International Day Against Homophobia – which is the 17th of May. This date was chosen as it was on that day in 1990 that the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
Earlier this year Paul set up the Helpline’s own email address hargh@live.co.uk and website www.hargh.weebly.com and I would urge you all to look at this if you haven’t done so as there some very interesting pages on it.
In May of this year the Helpline was able start a new project for LGB & T people who live in the Borough of Hastings and are 50 years of age or over. We provide a free venue which is a safe and non-commercial venue where people can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee, a biscuit or to relax, and receive and exchange information. This has been made possible through a successful application to the Hastings Borough Council’s Seniors Grants Fund.
During the 25 years of the Helpline thousands of calls have been answered, many clients have been met, and numerous correspondence, by letter and lately by email, has been replied to. More than 20 volunteers have given their time, patience and most importantly a listening ear, and although sadly many of them have now passed away I am fortunate to have very fond memories of them.
I would like to think that the Helpline has been an invaluable service to many and that we have been able help in a small way the betterment of not only the individual but the situation of LGB & T people in general.
Roger Sweetman
September 2012
In 1987 the Caring group decided that there should be a telephone service with its own separate number, until this time contact numbers were always those of individual members. So this was how Hastings Befrienders was formed. There were ten people at our first meeting and we were fortunate that two of them had been volunteers on a Gay helpline before moving to Hastings.
Hastings Befrienders was able to start operating with small donations from its own members, with a grant from 1066GCO and a donation from a charity event that was put on by the then Councillor Jane Amstad, who I am pleased to say is with us today. Apart from further donations from Jane’s fundraising efforts the Helpline didn’t’ receive any outside funding for several years.
I can still remember our first fund raising event – a progressive dinner party - where each course was eaten in a different member’s home.
Originally the Helpline operated on Friday nights between 8 and 10 pm from a designated telephone in a gay friend’s home with two volunteers on duty and we held business meetings every month. We took our first call soon after we went live on the 24th of July 1987; it was from National Gay Switchboard confirming our number. Our second caller said ‘thank goodness there is a phone line at last’. An opinion people still hold today.
As we operated only on one evening a week, and did not have the funds for an office we were extremely grateful to accept the offer from a supporter to use a separate telephone line in his home. We eventually switched from Friday to Wednesday evenings and from 7pm to 9pm as there were sometimes social activities taking place on Friday evenings and it would be beneficial not only to callers to know about these, the volunteers could also attend.
Advertising the Helpline was not easy but we managed to get an advert in the Friday Ad. At the time there were other gay groups in the south east and they had our details, as did the gay press such as existed at the time. We were an early subscriber to the St Leonards P.O. Box service and were given P. O. Box 6. In the first ten years of the Helpline we received many requests for help and information by post, and one person wrote to us regularly and only last year that person telephoned the Helpline on several occasions.
I took my first call on my first evening on duty on the 14th of August, it was from a young man who wasn’t sure of his sexuality and just wanted to talk to somebody.
We were only a few months old when the infamous and repressive Clause 28 became law and it wasn’t until November 2003 that it was repealed.
We held our first AGM in March 1988 at Hastings Voluntary Services meeting room in Cambridge Gardens and reported we had answered 80 genuine calls. HVS was the forerunner of Hastings Voluntary Action.
AIDS was still very much in the forefront as far as gay men were concerned, and in 1988 some of the volunteers of the Helpline decided something had to be done and got together with local health-workers and HARASS (Hastings & Rother Aid Support Society) was formed, and this subsequently became South East Aids Support.
The Helpline subsequently moved its telephone and shared an office with HARASS but we decided to move on from their premises in Cambridge Gardens as it was expected that a financial contribution would be required from the 1st of September 1993 and we only had £43.25 in the bank. Thankfully a volunteer on the line offered to house the telephone in his home, which was gratefully accepted, and the Helpline was housed there for over 18 years.
In 1993 the Helpline was contacted by a group of local lesbians and for a few years they ran a Lesbian Line on Monday evenings, their first night was the 6th of September, using the same telephone number. Sadly, the number of their volunteers dwindled so the Lesbian Line was short-lived.
Once we were in our new home Lewis investigated unused telephone numbers and then he applied for the number 01424 444777 which was in use until earlier this year when for the convenience of both our volunteers and users we switched to a mobile phone.
In the late 90’s the NHS contacted the Helpline as they believed there was a need for a support group for LGBT people and for gay men in particular. Our small band of volunteers had long realised that a support and social group was needed to help with the well-being of LGBT people and their mental well-being in particular, but with the absence of outside support and a venue this was not possible. To many just knowing there was a Helpline they could telephone was a lifeline. With their support and the funds provided by the NHS we could advertise the Helpline regularly, and with this came the bonus of being able to meet clients, always in two’s, and to provide them with a place where they could meet other people like themselves, should they so wish, and a separate social group was set up in 1999. The first meeting place was the café of St Mary-in-the -Castle.
Funding for the Helpline was received from the NHS via the Terrence Higgins Trust for three years, but we only ever received an amount equal to our expenditure for the previous year so there was never any opportunity to take on new projects.
However, with the backing of the NHS, members of the Helpline and the social group became more confident and began to play an active role in the wider community. The social group was concerned that nothing was being done for LGB & T people locally, and so Steve Manwaring, director of HVA was invited to a meeting to discuss the lack of support for LGB & T people in the town. This led to numerous meetings in which the Helpline volunteers actively participated, this led to the subsequent formation and launch of the Rainbow Alliance in St Mary-in-the-Castle in 2002.
In August 2008 members of the Helpline together with other Lesbians & Gays met with Graham Hill of Victim Support which had obtained the contract for the whole of Sussex for the new hate crime service. The Helpline offered to take calls on homophobic incidents and to assist callers in completing the report form. Several volunteers undertook advocacy training with Victim Support and together with other LGBT advocates from Eastbourne attended quarterly meetings with Victim Support. The Helpline volunteers promoted this work and the general hate crime service provided by Victim Support at the various fora and networks of which they were members.
We obtained funding from the NHS Hastings & Rother Health Improvement Grants & from the Safer Hastings Partnership which enabled us to promote our wider service and flyers were produced. The Hate Crime Service was launched at Bar Blah in St. Leonards in November 2009.
In June 2009 we had started using the title Hastings & Rother Gay Helpline as this more accurately reflected the work that we were doing but it wasn’t until April 2010 that we formally changed our name to the Hastings & Rother Gay Helpline when a new constitution was agreed.
In May 2010 Paul hosted a fund raising event in his garden to commemorate IDAHO – the International Day Against Homophobia – which is the 17th of May. This date was chosen as it was on that day in 1990 that the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.
Earlier this year Paul set up the Helpline’s own email address hargh@live.co.uk and website www.hargh.weebly.com and I would urge you all to look at this if you haven’t done so as there some very interesting pages on it.
In May of this year the Helpline was able start a new project for LGB & T people who live in the Borough of Hastings and are 50 years of age or over. We provide a free venue which is a safe and non-commercial venue where people can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee, a biscuit or to relax, and receive and exchange information. This has been made possible through a successful application to the Hastings Borough Council’s Seniors Grants Fund.
During the 25 years of the Helpline thousands of calls have been answered, many clients have been met, and numerous correspondence, by letter and lately by email, has been replied to. More than 20 volunteers have given their time, patience and most importantly a listening ear, and although sadly many of them have now passed away I am fortunate to have very fond memories of them.
I would like to think that the Helpline has been an invaluable service to many and that we have been able help in a small way the betterment of not only the individual but the situation of LGB & T people in general.
Roger Sweetman
September 2012
Closing address by Paul Broadhurst, Chair
I would like to thank you all for coming. We’ve had some very interesting and informative talks this afternoon.
There is just one more thing that I would like to say, and it’s a personal belief that I would like to share with you all. Being in a minority group whether it’s because of sexuality or disability, or any other reason can make you wish that you weren’t, and even resentful, but there is a positive side to it as well.
From my own experiences I believe that it can make you more sympathetic and aware of the needs of people in other minority groups as well as your own, and create a desire to want to help others that you may not otherwise have had.
Thank you again.
There is just one more thing that I would like to say, and it’s a personal belief that I would like to share with you all. Being in a minority group whether it’s because of sexuality or disability, or any other reason can make you wish that you weren’t, and even resentful, but there is a positive side to it as well.
From my own experiences I believe that it can make you more sympathetic and aware of the needs of people in other minority groups as well as your own, and create a desire to want to help others that you may not otherwise have had.
Thank you again.