Dr Dan Parker has returned from the 4th National Conference on GLBT Ageing which took place in New York from October 12 to 14, where he presented a workshop on the work of Perth’s GLBT Retirement Association Incorporated (GRAI). Over 600 people attended the conference, and while the majority were service providers rather than researchers, representatives from the UK’s Age Concern plus America’s SAGE (Service and Advocacy for GLBT Elders) were in attendance. Overall the conference examined a number of various models being utilised to create a sustainable future for aged GLBT retirement care.
Dr Parker identified different models of care provision amongst organisation present at the conference. At SAGE, services are provided in one organisation that offers a range of services, including home care services, home care advocacy and mental health services. A different approach was evident in San Francisco, where, Dr Parker explained, ‘they have a model that’s based on a range of agencies providing different services and intervening and working with mainstream organisations to increase the range of services they provide.’ One project in this model involved placing staff to specifically facilitate the use of mainstream centres, which were significantly underutilised by GLBT seniors.
Dr Parker noted that ‘A lot of resources are available now from other agencies including curricula for doing cultural competency training for doing needs assessment, there’s a lot of sharing resources and hopefully GRAI will be able to review those and make use of the for the services that are done here.’
