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Do you want to go into the healthcare field? Do you want to work with the geriatric community?

Caregiving in the LGBT Community

With no family, a caregiver finds a support system in her neighborhood

AARP

By Victoria Sackett  

November 20, 2017

Like so many people thrown into the family caregiving role, Cindy Mermin was taken by surprise. Mermin, a clinical psychologist, and her wife, Helen McDermott, a clinical social worker, had a successful psychology practice in Manhattan when McDermott had heart valve replacement surgery in 2004. 

[…]

As is often the case among lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) older adults, there was no family to lean on. Mermin, who is 78, and her wife, who is 84, are both long estranged from their families because they couldn’t come to terms with a loved one being gay.

When older people in the general population need help with everyday tasks, they most often turn to family. Eighty-five percent of caregivers are family members -- spouses, sons and frequently daughters.

I don’t think that I am that far away from that point.

LGBT elders are twice as likely to be single and aging alone as the general population, according to SAGE. In addition to alienation from family, they are also three-to-four times less likely to have children.

We become socially isolated and that is one thing that I am working on.

Trans Aging Project

How many Pride parades have something for senior adults? At the rally in West Hartford I give them an “A+” for having seats up near the front for those who mobility challenged!

 “For us, those people [Family members as caregivers] don’t exist,” says Alex Kent, a caregiving consultant at SAGE, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBT older adults. “I'm been asked by several clients for my number to list me as an emergency contact,” says Kent. “For us, those people don't always exist. They don’t have anyone else.”

Senior center, bereavement groups, support groups for diseases all of those make some of us feel like outcasts.

The idea of turning to a senior center or other community resource for help provoked lots of anxiety. Wary of how they will be treated, LGBT older adults access support services like senior centers and meal programs, housing assistance or food stamps, at only 20 percent the rate that their non-LGBT peers do, according to Prepare to Care: A Planning Guide for Caregivers in the LGBT Community, a joint publication of SAGE and AARP. “Our generation is uneasy all the time,” Mermin says.

I’ve gone to the senior in town and they treated me excellently but it is hard when you are the only trans person in the whole room.

So some of the things I have been pushing… more activities for us at Pride Centers during the day such as a drop in center, and a LGBTQ+ bill of rights for Long Term Care facilities. Something is on the wish list… a 55+ LGBTQ+ facility.

So the beginning of this post I said about a job. Have you thought about going into geriatric healthcare? Many of us LGBTQ+ would feel a lot more comfortable have someone from our community take care of them.