Getting Old

Let’s face it, it is something that we all want to delay however, we all are getting old and I don’t like the alternative.

We basically have five options:

• Age in place (Home healthcare),
• Senior housing,
• Assisted living,
• Long Term Care facility (LTC),
• Pushing up daisies.

Aging in place
The choices are having a person come in to do basics and can range from a few hours a day or 24/7 — with personal care, household chores and basic healthcare services.

But with that come apprehension… will they be okay that I’m trans? Will I have to hide my transness?

We are inviting a stranger into our homes and we are understandably concerned , will someone come in and start quoting the Bible to us? Would they constantly be misgendering us? Or would they be totally cool with us?

Aging can be hard for those in the trans community
The Washington Post
By Chloe Coleman
October 27, 2018

Jess T. Dugan, a photographer, and Vanessa Fabbre, a social worker and assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, discovered their work had more in common than they realized. Dugan’s work focused on identity, gender and sexuality, specifically within the transgender community; Fabbre had been researching aging.

Fabbre discovered early on that traditional assumptions about gerontology, not unlike those about gender, ignore some groups of people, such as members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community, excluding them from research. She began to explore the experience of aging for trans people, and for trans women who had transitioned later in life.
[…]
“We were both aware that in the LGBTQ world, there’s a fair amount of ageism and lack of awareness about aging, and in the aging world there’s a fair amount of homophobia and transphobia and lack of awareness of LGBTQ issues, especially trans identities,” she writes.
[…]
In an interview, Dugan says the two were committed to diversity in their project, including people whose lives “exist within the complex intersection of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic class and geographic location.”

How would you feel is the person had a rainbow on their ID?

One of the organizations that I am associated with created the Getting It Right initiative to train homecare providers and LTC facilities on the needs and care of the aging LGBTQ+ community.

Senior housing, Assisted living, and Long Term Care facility
The major thoughts we have when we are told we will need to move to a resident facility… how will the other residents treat us? Will we be harassed? Will we become socially isolated?

That leads me to another committee that I’m on. The State Unit On Aging Long Term Care Ombudsman Program has initiated Inclusive Community Workgroup. Our charge is to look into ways LTC facilities can become more welcoming for not only the trans community but also welcoming diversity based on age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and socioeconomic class.

As for being harassed or socially isolated that is one of the topics that was covered in Friday’s meeting. Both the LTC Ombudsman and the facilities agree that LTC has a duty to prevent harassment by other residents.

In Massachusetts last year they passed “An Act Relative to LGBT Awareness Training for Aging Services Providers,” the Rainbow Times reported…

BOSTON—Last week, the Massachusetts Legislature passed “An Act Relative to LGBT Awareness Training for Aging Services Providers,” which will require the Executive Office of Elder Affairs (EOEA) to develop a training program for providers of elder services on how to prevent discrimination against older adults based on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression and on how to improve access to services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) elders and caregivers. The law also requires all providers of aging services who contract with or receive funding from MassHealth’s office of long-term care or EOEA, or whose services are certified by EOEA, to complete the training program.

Elder care for the LGBTQ+ community and other minorities are becoming more into the spotlight as state agencies and non-profits realize the intersections of aging and gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and socioeconomic class.