COTA SA's Rainbow Hub helps queer seniors get support and services

COTA SA's Rainbow Hub helps queer seniors get access to the support and services they need. This includes putting them in touch with social groups, accessing My Aged Care and end-of-life planning.

Its Silver Rainbow Training workshop creates awareness for people working in aged care homes about the issues and situations queer seniors might face and how to be empathetic to or support them.

Hub chair Peter Jones said connectivity, safety, dignity, respect and visibility are the main priorities.

For people particularly from The Silent Generation (born 1928-1948), typically known for being traditionalist and conformist, all issues may come to the fore in equal measure.

This is particularly because they lived a great deal of their lives when homosexual acts - particularly between men - were illegal (male homosexuality was decriminalised in South Australia in 1975). Discretion, keeping up appearances and living a double life were paramount to survival.

Until 2021, the gay panic defence could be used to justify a violent act against someone if you felt they had approached you in a non-violent homosexual advance.

As a facilitator in the Silver Rainbow program, Peter has shared stories where men aged 80 have come out while in aged care, and women have stayed unhappily married with men for decades for fear of losing access to their children if they chose to divorce and pursue a relationship with a woman.

He has also heard of the violence people experienced from being thrown into the River Torrens or bashed with a baseball bat being excused - legally and socially - under the gay panic defence.

"People don't realise that it was illegal to be gay," Peter said. "That has massive implications for when you're going into aged care and receiving aged care services.

"A lot of people are frightened about being who they are.

"If they have dementia, people might go back into the closet in part because of the illness, but [for others] there is also the fear of actually being old and living in a time when it was illegal to be yourself."

A Baby Boomer, Peter does think part of it is generational. For example, his mother was a "powerful, strong, influential" woman from The Silent Generation, who became invisible once she went into aged care.

"By definition, boomers won't be silent anyway, but I don't want to be; I don't want to see the LGBTIQA+ community silenced."

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Connecting, particularly to a chosen or "allied family" is important.

The Rainbow Hub networks with many service providers who have coffee, movie and lunch groups to give social opportunities to people and offer gateways for queer people to know who to speak to about aged care services.

"A lot of people - mainly gay men - don't have family, so they have an allied family they have to rely on," Peter said.

"If that is no longer there, they can tap into the people they've met at an aged care service provider already and say 'I need some home care help. Who do I go see?' That barrier is broken down.

"It's the social connectedness and then you can seek out support if and when you need it. And most of us will need it."

Date from the 2021 Census showed 22,184 people in Australia aged 60 or more lived in a same-sex relationship.