Telephone counselling

Gay and Lesbian Switchboard (Victoria) Incorporated is a volunteer organisation which provides a telephone counselling, referral and information service for the Victorian and Tasmanian gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (GLBTI) communities. We are also pleased to extend this service to family and friends of GLBTI individuals as well as health and welfare professionals with GLBTI clients.

Switchboard's service is free, anonymous and confidential. Our phones are staffed by trained volunteers who themselves are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Switchboard was established in 1991 by a collective of motivated and caring individuals with the support of the ALSO foundation to provide a vital service to Victoria's queer community. Since then our service has grown to include Tasmania and is staffed by over forty trained volunteers staffing the phones for over 30 hours per week.

In order to become a volunteer counsellor, one must complete an intensive training programme. Switchboard's trained volunteer counsellors receive calls from a wide range of people: queer folk who may be experiencing problems at work, in their relationships or with their family; people who are coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and family or friends of people who are gay or lesbian. Some issues may be related to a caller's sexuality or the caller will often choose to call our service about issues not related to sexuality but prefer the help of a GLBTI organisation.

Information 

Part of Switchboard's mission is to provide the GLBTI community with the information it needs. We are constantly building and updating our comprehensive database of queer groups, organisations, businesses and services. A condensed selection of this database is provided on this website. Our telephone counsellors have access to the full database and can help find exactly what you need.
If you would like include your service, group or business please apply through the links on the contact page. 

Community

The queer calendar is certainly very busy and ever changing. We will do our best to keep up to date with the various community events. These will be featured in our community section.If you would like us to include your event in our calendar please complete the new database entry form on our contact page or email us at admin@switchboard.org.au