Intersex Awareness Day 2023 - Interlink Webinar

InterLink is a specialty intersex health and wellbeing service for people with innate variations of sex characteristics of any age and parents/caregivers of kids with intersex variations. InterLink offers free, short-term one-on-one counselling and group programs to clients anywhere in Australia via telehealth. InterLink has a brief, short-term format that is easy to engage with and helps people of all ages start having conversations about intersex bodies and any health or interpersonal issues with the support of trained mental health professionals and intersex peer workers. We can also assist with connecting people with information, allied health, advocacy and peer support services though peer-led care coordination. You can find out more about the support options at InterLink by heading to https://www.ilink.net.au

This Intersex Awareness Day on 26 October 2023 join the team at InterLink in a lunchtime webinar to learn about the psychosocial needs of the intersex community and our peer-led and community-based responses to these - InterLink.

Bonnie Hart - InterLink Manger

Bonnie Hart is an intersex woman, peer worker and systemic advocate working with and within the intersex community improving access to affirmative, rights-based health and mental health services. Bonnie is the Deputy Executive Director of Intersex Human Rights
Australia, and Designer and Manager of InterLink, a national peer-led intersex psychosocial support program. Bonnie has a wealth of experience as a peer supporter and was instrumental in coordinating the 2017 Darlington Statement of intersex community consensus within Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia and founder of the YellowTick intersex education and inclusion initiative. As an early career academic and PhD candidate at the University of Southern Queensland, Bonnie's psychological research uses a critical intersex lens to address how people with intersex variations navigate complex psychological, social, legal, and medical issues to safely access affirmative healthcare and social services. Her publications include:

• Intersex Lived Experience: Trauma and Posttraumatic Growth in Narratives;
  
• Towards a whole-school approach for sexuality education in supporting and upholding the rights and health of students with intersex variations;
  
• Intersex awareness and education: what part can health and physical education bodies of learning and teaching play?;
  
• Health intervention experiences and associated mental health outcomes in a sample of LGBTQ people with intersex variations in Australia; and
  
• Intersex: Stories and Statistics from Australia.

Natalie Hamam - InterLink Mental Health Practitioner

Natalie is the InterLink Mental Health practitioner and they are also an occupational therapist with 20+ years experience.  They provide 1-on-1 sessions for children and adults with intersex variations and also co-facilitate the interlink group sessions with a peer-worker.  Prior to working at InterLink Nat has worked with people around issues related to sex, gender and relationships since 2009, but despite this their awareness of issues impacting the intersex community was still low.  Nat will share about their journey of upskilling their professional skills as well as sharing about the work being done by InterLink.