The GLBTI Retirement Association Incorporated (GRAI) has applied to LotteryWest for funding to undertake the largest study to date on retirement living and aged care for GLBTI Australians.
In a 2006-2007 pilot study, GRAI, which formed in mid-2005, developed several focus groups within the GLBTI community and surveyed 144 respondents about their retirement options and concerns. Using the pilot study as a framework, GRAI has collaborated with Curtin University’s WA Centre for Health Promotion Research (WACHPR) and Centre for Research on Ageing (CRA) to identify further research opportunities. GRAI Chairperson Graham Lovelock said it was individuals from these organizations working in partnership with members of the GRAI board that made the application to LotteryWest possible.
With projections that as many as 500,000 GLBTI Australians will be over 65 by 2031, GRAI’s proposed research would be the starting point to filling the needs of the ageing GLBTI community in Western Australia.
‘We are seeing an ageing population across the board in Australia, so as a society, we need to get the best possible solutions,’ said Jude Comfort, a research officer at WACHPR and a board member of GRAI.
If GRAI receives research funding, they will examine how the current retirement living and aged care sector in WA handles the needs of GLBTI individuals. The research will further aim to provide ‘guidelines as to how service providers can actually engage with the older and ageing GLBTI community as current and potential consumers of their services.’ Additionally, the research could ‘further the opportunity of looking at setting up a specific GLBT-friendly retirement living or aged care service,’ said Mr Lovelock.
A GLBTI retirement village is an option that appeals to many ageing GLBTI people because it provides both a health care environment in which they can safely disclose their sexual orientation as well as a non-heteronormative meeting place. However, such a facility should not be the only option available to GLBTI retirees, as individuals will vary in their preferences for aged care and retirement living, Mr Lovelock said.
He further emphasized that a critical part of GRAI’s research, if it receives the funding necessary to proceed, would engage with service providers to come up with practical ways to improve aged care options for the GLBTI community.
‘We will be setting up a reference group from within the aged care sector, and we have invited a number of peak body organizations to be part of our sector reference group. We thought it was really important we actually had reference from the retirement living and aged care sector so that they could provide feedback to us and be a point of dissemination to make sure that we are providing something useful to the sector, not just something that would sit on a shelf.’
