LGBT Health wins Equality Initiative of the Year award
We are delighted to announce that our LGBT Age Capacity Building Project has been awarded the Equality Initiative of the Year at the inaugural Scottish LGBTI awards held in Glasgow on Thursday 10th September 2015.
Funded by Reshaping Care for Older People’s Innovation Fund, the project was set up in response to the barriers that older LGBT people face in accessing services.
Our Deputy Director, Stacey Webster said,
“Older LGBT people have often been overlooked. They have lived a great part of their life in much less liberal times, and are frequently reluctant to use support services as they fear not feeling welcome or accepted.
The LGBT Age Capacity Building Project has brought to life the experiences that older LGBT face in accessing services and has been very successful in supporting organisations to provide services that are inclusive.”
In consultation with older members of the LGBT community and professionals working in health and social care services, we then launched a suite of a dozen resources to support older people’s services to become more welcoming and inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. The project also ran a series of seminars and events, alongside workplace training sessions in order to support organisations to provide the best services they can to older LGBT people.
These resources, alongside the Impact Report produced to share the learning of the project, form a supportive call for action: there is so much that can be done to improve the experience of using services for older LGBT people, and even small changes can make a big difference. We hope that these materials will help professionals to become allies and champions for the LGBT community, until LGBT people feel safe and welcome everywhere.