Rainbow Families
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For nearly a decade, Rainbow Families has been a cornerstone of support for LGBTQ+ parents and their children across NSW. From advocacy campaigns to inclusive education initiatives and community events, the organisation’s work has created meaningful connections and resources for queer families navigating the unique challenges and joys of parenting.
Recently becoming a national organisation, Rainbow Families Australia is amplifying its capabilities, empowering communities far beyond its New South Wales roots. In this interview, Gay Sydney Australia dives into the ways Rainbow Families is making a difference, the challenges they face, and their vision for a future where all LGBTQ+ families feel supported, celebrated, and connected.
Rainbow Families has been a crucial support system for LGBTQ+ families across Australia.
Can you tell us more about the key ways the organisation supports families, both practically and emotionally?
The work that Rainbow Families does can be divided into three areas.
Firstly advocacy, which is working towards removing discrimination in our families face.
Second is community connections, which provide opportunities for families to come together and be with other LGBTQ+ parents. That looks like our New Parents Group, our Play Groups, our Resilience Camps, our camping trips or large events. We have 400-500 people attend these larger events every year.
The last piece of the work we do is education. The education piece started off as providing safe and inclusive education opportunities for LGBTQ+ parents, for example, our antenatal class and parenting courses.
We’re also now providing education for mainstream service providers so they can be more inclusive of our diverse families. We’ve developed a Family Diversity Inclusion Training Package or Early Learning Centres for Maternity, Child And Family Health.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are great examples of tricky days for our families and if you’ve got an educator that knows how best to support families on those days, it can be a really easy, seamless, great day of celebration for the kids and also for the parents.
But there were so many educators who- despite the best of intentions- really don’t know how to best support diverse families. So we partnered with Early Childhood Australia and developed an online training module for educators. We then took that and amplified it to now offer face-to-face training sessions for educators.
This year, Rainbow Families became a national organisation—congratulations!
What prompted this, and how do you foresee it impacting the reach and scope of your programs?
About four years ago, a couple of the other volunteers from outside of New South Wales asked us if we could go national and support the organisations who are struggling.
So Rainbow Families spent a couple of years restructuring and getting our governance in place so that we could be a national organisation. In very exciting news, as of this financial year, we’re now a national charity, and we’re looking to support all LGBTQ+ parents and their families across Australia.
We’re working really hard with the volunteers around the country who are running groups and events for families, and looking to what we can do to support those volunteers and amplify the work that they’re doing already.
Over the past 10 years in New South Wales, we’ve developed so many resources, programs, supports and events, and we’re really excited to look at what out of that suite of resources is appropriate in other states and territories and look at the needs in those communities. We will look at the programs we developed here in New South Wales and what we’re able to then tailor to other states and territories so that the same supports are available around the country, no matter where you live.
What are some of the challenges and opportunities you face now as a national organisation, particularly when it comes to supporting families in more remote or rural areas?
The biggest challenge for Rainbow Families is funding and capacity. We’re actively working with the federal and state and territory governments to try and access funds so that we can have paid staff members on the ground in each state and territory- not just in capital cities, but also in regional areas so that we can support families no matter where they are.
Rainbow Families provides diverse resources, from antenatal classes to social events like Family Pride. Can you share more about the goals of these programs and how they’ve been received by the community?
The goal of everything that we do at Rainbow Families is to support, connect and empower LGBTQ+ parents and their kids, which is very different at different points in the parenting life cycle.
For example, for people who are looking to start a family, we have our Making Rainbow Families Seminar, which is run every May. It’s a wonderful day full of information for people who are thinking about becoming parents.
We then have our antenatal class, which is Australia’s only LGBTQ+ inclusive antenatal education for queer parents or queer people about to become parents, and our New Parents Group for new families.
As the kids get older we have our resilience camp, which is run every year here in Sydney. It’s a camp for primary school-aged children and their parents. For many families, it’s the first time their children meet other Rainbow Families. We’re hoping to expand this nationally next year.
We also have a youth group that we run here in Sydney, which is a group for children who are aged 9- 15 who have queer parents, to come together and be with other kids who also have queer parents.
Advocacy is a central part of Rainbow Families’ work. Could you share some recent successes or ongoing efforts in combating systemic discrimination affecting LGBTQ+ families?
In recent times we’ve worked very closely with Alex Greenwich on his New South Wales Equality Bill. We had a great win for gay dads who created their families through surrogacy, and thanks to our advocacy work we are able to access parentage orders which means that these dad are now able to be legally recognised as the parents of their children, which wasn’t the case up until now.
We’re also currently working on a campaign around access to Medicare rebates for people, when they’re using IVF to create a family. At the moment, LGBTQ+ people generally have to go through 3 failed rounds of IVF before they’re able to access the Medicare rebate. We’re working hard with the Federal health department to change this access. This campaign also includes surrogacy families not being able to access that rebate.
What would you like to see change in the next 5-10 years for LGBTQ+ families in Australia, and how does Rainbow Families plan to help achieve that vision?
We would like to see that all queer parents and their kids are able to access safe and inclusive education. and to be able to connect with the community in their local area.
Rainbow Families as an organisation, plays a pivotal role over the next five years as we start working outside of New South Wales and having more of a presence so that families can connect in with our services, our programs, but also importantly to meet other local queer parents and their kids, which is so so important to the happiness of families.
For people who want to support Rainbow Families, what are some of the best ways to get involved?
I’d encourage them to jump onto our website, have a look at the programs and the supports that we offer. You can also donate if you’re able to make a financial contribution to our work.
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