Ella Shannon, SAS National Chair has a workshop at the upcoming Australian Counselling Association Conference in Sydney. Her workshop is titled 'Talking to your Counselling Clients about Sex'. In the lead up to the conference, ACA CEO Phillip Armstrong interviewed Ella about her workshop. Have a watch here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMUWgty_qYw

Just a friendly reminder that only Accredited members may use a SAS logo on their website or in an email signature. This is outlined in our Code of Ethics and Practice Document. Item 15- Advertising. 

15.5.1 Accredited Members may use the Society logo on their personal websites, and it must be accompanied by the following statement: “[Member’s Name] is an Accredited [Associate/Clinical] [Psychosexual Therapist/Sexuality Educator] with the Society of Australian Sexologists Ltd. He / she adheres to the Society’s Code of Ethics and Practice. To find out more, go to www.australiansexologists.org.au.”

Committee members can use the SAS logo on their official SAS email signature only, if you are a committee member and need a SAS email please get in touch. 

The NSW Branch of the Society of Australian Sexologists presents this online event. 

Expression of sexuality by older people, particularly those with dementia, can be challenging and confronting for residential aged care staff, families and other carers.

Dr Cindy Jones developed an online education intervention in 2013 to increase knowledge and improve attitudes of residential aged care staff towards the expression of sexuality by older people including those with dementia.

Join the NSW Society of Australian Sexology branch as we explore dementia and sexuality with Dr Jones. This session aims to provide: 

- An orientation to Dementia 

- An orientation to Sexuality challenges in the context of Dementia

- An opportunity to engage in discussion and Questions with a specialist expert

- An orientation to best practice interventions for psychosexual therapy and sexuality education regarding Dementia and expression of sexuality. 

The session will be held via zoom, and recorded. 

Register: https://societyaustraliansexologists.org.au/event-5320561

The WA branch of the Society of Australian Sexologists Ltd. is proud to present:

Sexuality and Disability: SECCA App Training

The SECCA App is a digital translation of a hard-copy resource developed by SECCA alongside Educators and Therapists working with children and adults with disabilities.  The SECCA App provides teachers, education assistants, counsellors, health workers, medical staff, and support staff with a resource to assess and develop an individual’s understanding of relationships and sexuality concepts.

Alysha and Kimberley will highlight the value of this web application and provide real-life examples of how to utilise the App whilst working with Autistic clients or students to ensure they can receive comprehensive sexuality education in a manner that bridges gaps, increases understanding of new consents and is sensitive to communication preferences.

 If participants wish to do guided activities personally, they can pre-register for the App (free) at: https://app.secca.org.au/app/login#register

 We are also happy for participants to send through any questions they may have they would like answered about the app, or de-identified case studies they would like us to show how the App can assist so we can fit these in where possible.

Date:               Wednesday 12th July 2023
Time:              6.00 pm – 8:00 pm
Venue:            Online
Cost:                Free for members, $10 for non-members
RSVP:             Essential by 7th July 2023.
wa-secretary@societyaustraliansexologists.org.au
Notes:             A Zoom link will be sent on the 7^h of July 2023.
CPD:                Meets requirements for CPD activities as generally defined;  please check with your registration body.

About the presenters

Alysha Oorjitham - SECCA Counsellor and Education Officer: Alysha is an Occupational Therapist (OT) who is passionate about empowering individuals to live fulfilling and pleasurable lives as sexual beings. She is enthusiastic about celebrating all aspects of sexuality, LGBTQIA+ exploration and identities, and advocacy for accessible sex and relationship education. At SECCA, Alysha works as an OT, counsellor/consultant, and education officer. She has a particular passion for upskilling and empowering health professionals to support clients with disabilities in providing LGBTQIA+ inclusive and trauma-informed care when addressing the area of sexuality and gender. Alysha gets the opportunity to utilise her skills as an OT in various ways at SECCA, one of many being her ability to support clients with disabilities to find sexual aids that suit their specific needs and functional requests. Alysha enjoys the opportunity to provide comprehensive sex education as a means of harm prevention. She has a Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy (Honours) and is currently studying a Graduate Diploma in Sexology.

Kimberley Andreassen - SECCA Education Officer: Kimberley has lived experience as a Neurodivergent, Queer and Non-binary person, and is highly passionate and enthusiastic about intersectional sexual health and relationship education for all regardless of gender, disability, sexual diversity, race, or other intersections. They would love to enact social change through advocacy, education, support, and policy. Their special interests are sexology, Autism, gender diversity, and sexual diversity. At SECCA, Kimberley works with other education officers to develop and enhance resources related to sexuality and disability. Kimberley has a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) and is currently studying a Graduate Diploma in Business Analytics at Deakin and a Master of Sexology at Curtin.

The International Society for Sexual Medicine has a Youtube channel, where they post lots of free webinars that may be of interest to our members. Many videos are a few minutes long, answering some really interesting questions, they also have over 30 hour+ long webinars!

Thank you to Nina Booyson of the SAS advocacy subcommittee for bringing this great free resource to our attention. 

Subscribe here: https://www.youtube.com/@ISSM_Info/videos 

Got something cool to share with members? email it through so we can add it to our next National Newsletter. chair@societyaustraliansexologists.org.au 

The Society of Australian Sexologists is an Organisational Member of Australian Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) and Australian Sexual and Reproductive Health Alliance (ASRHA). Our SAS Chairperson (Ella Shannon) sits on the ASRHA committee and on behalf of SAS and with the support of our National Council, have endorsed ASHM's support statement for the Voice to Parliament. Feel free to share amongst your networks. 

https://ashm.org.au/about/news/ashm-statement-supporting-the-voice-to-parliament/

NSW SAS Members recently enjoyed an interactive session with Dr Chris Fox looking at assistive technology (aka sexual wellbeing aides) and their role to compliment psychosexual therapy. Attendees were able to see, touch and learn the utility of modern equipment available as "off the shelf" items. Thanks to the NSW Branch for putting on a great learning opportunity. 

World Sexual Health Day is September 4th. The theme is consent. We would love to create some short videos featuring our wonderful members.

Please send your 30-45sec video to chair@societyaustraliansexologists.org.au 

Due Date: 4th August.

Please answer one of the following questions in your video.

1. 'How to make consent sexy for (one of the following) older people, on apps, disability, ongoing consent, consent in longterm relationships.

2. What does consent look like for: young children, same sex couples, non-monogamy, your first time, etc

3. What are the benefits of consent for: (pleasure, safety, communication, respect, etc)

By email:

Please send your name, title (eg sexologist / sex educator / teacher / counsellor) and workplace or business (optional). these will appear as text under your video, please don't introduce yourself in the vid.

Please send via email the question you are answering, this will also appear as text, so in your video, just go straight to the answer.

Tips:

The videos will be joined together to make a compilation of a few minutes each, they will be shared via social media, website and newsletters and members will be encouraged to share widely.

Make it fun, deep, interesting, we want short grabs but going WAY beyond the good old 'no means no' obviously.

world sexual health day.png

Tanya Elizabeth (QLD Branch Member) held the first recent grad peer supervision session recently. A small group of 4 reported an intimate and enjoyable session. These groups were set up to create a confidential and non-judgemental space for those recently starting work as sexologists. They are open to people in therapy or education streams. Tanya Elizabeth is a sexologist and art therapist, and welcomes you to join. 2nd Tuesday of every month.

Our Annual Sexology in Practice Symposium will be LIVE again for the first time in what feels like forever! We are hoping to make the live element really special, with networking activities, trade tables, tables to share your flyers / business cards, door prizes and maybe even some performances!

We have created a 'Facebook Event' for SIPs too, if you have a FB account, we would really appreciate it if you could just on the event page, click 'going' and invite any friends that may be interested. 

We have an incredible array of speakers planned, for announcements so far go to 2023 Program

To ensure accessibility, we also hope to stream the event for people that cannot attend in person.