ࡱ> bdc!` <bjbj\\ .R>>4%       &&&8^$,02"80:0:0:0:0:0:0$1hS4^0 z"z"z"^0  s0$$$z"  80$z"80$$:*,  * ` }&",* 800006*R4#j4*4 *\$nJ 0^0^0<$j0z"z"z"z"$ B B       HREOC Inquiry Adelaide 28/8/06 Dr Jo Harrison Health Sciences University of South Australia First I would like to welcome the inquiry to, as my submission stated, the most unsafe State in Australia if you are a gay, lesbian, bisexual transgender or intersex (GLBTI) person. As you are well aware, we have a situation in South Australia that is causing anger, frustration and despair. I am currently experiencing all three. Many of us can hardly face telling our stories yet again. The GLBTI community here has been and is being treated in a seriously unjust manner. You will hear shortly about our own personal experience of fear of discrimination and how it is an ever-present reality in our 21 year relationship. We are both originally from Sydney, then lived in Central Australia for over a decade and now we are currently living in Adelaide. We will address those matters shortly. Discrimination and Aged Care To begin, I would like to thank the Commission and the President for the opportunity to speak to my submission on same-sex discrimination in aged care. Aged care is one of those bizarre animals that cuts across Commonwealth, State, Local, NGO and informal sector lines. Often even those of us within the industry have to stop and remember where the lines of accountability run and where the dollars are coming from. So its legislatively and administratively a maze and thats putting it politely. The maze translates on the ground into a situation often described in the literature as a nightmare. And that is, of course, heteronormative literature, which refers only to opposite sex couples and heterosexuals. For same-sex couples the Australian aged care industry (which I see as including all endeavours related to ageing, such as research, education, advocacy, policy development, legislative reform and direct service provision) the industry is not just a nightmare or a maze, its worse than that. Its a world in which you dont exist. You are invisible and fear feeds the invisibility. Homophobia and transphobia feed the fear and the cycle continues. This area is, to my mind, the most seriously neglected issue in aged care and in gay and lesbian rights in Australia. As a community, gays and lesbians are predominantly neglecting our own elders, which is seriously detrimental to us all in many respects. I was going to end with some examples I wanted to mention, but I have decided to bring them up front and mention them now. A gay older man attending a day centre is threatened with being barred for being too flamboyant and is told to wear latex gloves to protect staff from infection there were social as well as financial implications for him, including the potential denial of access to a fee-free service with allied health professionals available to him. A gay older man is moved without consultation from a residential facility to a psychiatric aged care facility, and the social worker is told he had too many male visitors. This impacted on him financially, including in relation to the loss of his independent unit. A lesbian and her life partner are in hospital in the discharge unit with the discharge officer. No recognition of their partnership is made or allowed for on the assessment form which assesses the woman for residential care admission. The best option for her partner would be other . There are financial losses associated with not being a heterosexual couple. Both of these women remain silent about their relationship. There could be financial implications in addition to fees and charges, connected to coming out, and they wont risk that. An older gay man commits suicide while living in a residential care setting. The financial and other implications of taking the risk of outing himself (thinking he might be evicted) play a role in this, according to the EO of the organisation. The EO comes out and initiates change of attitudes within the organisation. A lesbian in her 60s seeks legal advice from the aged care rights advocacy service around financial discrimination. She has never heard of the service. In the US, a large Catholic residential facility accommodates hundreds of older people. The local GLBTI aged care advocacy organisation wants to run a session about GLBTI issues with residents. They get told by management we guarantee you wont find any of them here. They still get the OK and go ahead. They worked with the staff first, including GLBTI staff. Then they met with the residents. Some of the staff said you dont have to be out, but we are GLBTI and / or we are not homophobic and we are here. You can come to us in confidence. Out they came. Some only in private. Now there is a Rainbow Group at the facility. Some of them even take part in the Pride March. As my submission states, in 2004 I completed Doctoral research on GLBTI ageing in the US and Australia. We lag behind countries such as Canada, the US and the UK, where steps have been taken at the level of legislative reforms, amendments to regulations around standards of care, and reform of program guidelines (such as those impacting on aged care advocacy services here), as well as education of providers. Overseas reforms have been adopted to protect GLBTI older people, even if they never come out publicly. Even if they never complain. Even if they would not describe themselves as gay or lesbian or transgender etc. I have outlined or given references to some of these projects, including legal cases, in my submission. The invisibility of GLBTI older p is compounded by ageism and the fear of physical dependency, economic hardship and abuse, including financial abuse. This is, quite simply, shameful. To date the only governments at federal or state level to acknowledge GLBTI aged care at all are the Victorian and NSW governments, the latter through the Anti-discrimination Board. Neither of these mentions is in legislation. I am a member of the SA Ministerial Advisory council on gay and lesbian health. We have included aged care in our communications. Ironically, we remain government policy and statement free in relation to GLBTI aged care, although the Minister for Ageing has funded a specific project of the Feast Festival from seniors program monies. Similar small grants have been made in other States. The SA one got a mention in parliament and it was not favourable. This directly relates to financial hardship and serious inequity in the application of regulations and guidelines concerning fees for residential and other services and the threat of loss of the family home or as Newcastle older lesbian Sandy MacDonald calls it the family house they dont regard it as a home the loss of the home at a time of serious distress - the admission of one member of a relationship to a residential facility. Or the impending loss of the home at the two year point of residence. I am glad, although thats not the best word, that Jim Woulfe, who gave evidence in Sydney, was most galled by the mean treatment of partners of those needing residential facilities. So am I. I have Sandys permission to table her speech to a forum on GLBTI ageing which I was lucky to attend. She outlines their experience of the aged care system and its not pretty. Her partner Elin has now passed away, and when I asked whether I could name her, Sandy told me after all this time being open about our relationship, I have no qualms about being "named" - in fact I would be honoured on our behalf. Elin would be really pissed off if she thought I was back-sliding at this stage of my life. I want to acknowledge Sandy and others, too many to name, including activists who are in their 80s, Ken Lovett and Mannie de Saxe from Intersection in Melbourne and David Urquhart from Access Plus Spanning Identities, Sydney, who is in his 60s, for being out and loud. They are a relative rarity, as are members of organisations such as Rainbow Visions, GRAI, the ALSO Foundation, Matrix and 10/40 amongst others across Australia. They provide us with some evidence and a human face in relation to ageing and financial discrimination. It was suggested by the Commission that I may be able to bring along people who could directly refer to the matter of discrimination they have experienced in relation to aged care. That no one is here with me today speaks volumes. In the US I was repeatedly told by experts in the field that I would be advocating for an almost invisible constituency. Most older GLBTI people will never be out. If they are, it will mainly occur AFTER they know it is safe to do so. Again I got told by experts not to wait for evidence but to be assured that discrimination was occurring and that people were afraid. The prevention of discriminatory circumstances and the transmission of a message of safety the onus being on us, not them, to change things, is what experts told me that GLBTI aged care was all about. This makes it very difficult, I know, including for the Commission. I am aware of anecdotal in confidence examples, as the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON) have outlined in their supplementary submission, of discrimination (which is itself elder abuse) which involved economic as well as other factors, from locations across Australia. We have established an informal national network of people with an interest in GLBTI ageing, and I have given a series of keynotes on the subject, while assisting government and non-government agencies conduct developmental work in the area. I am aware that many of the 200 members of the Sydney group Mature Age Gays live in residential aged care settings, or are consumers of Community Aged Care Packages or Extended Aged Care in the Home Packages. Not one of them is publicly out to their service provider. Most are not out to anyone other than the men in the group. This is serious fear of discrimination. I have worked in the aged care industry as an advocate, trainer and educator. My background is in social work and social research, and I have almost always worked in the field of gerontology. I have seen the threats and the punishment. Until there is a critical masse of out baby boomers, being out in the aged care sector, as a consumer or provider of service (which would ward off some discrimination) is something only the brave or foolhardy would consider. I have GLBTI friends in their 60s 70s and 80s. They are determined not to subjected as they put it, to the formal aged care system. Economic inequity plays a very significant role in this determination. Currently, Commonwealth legislation, regulations, funding program guidelines and service agreements leave older GLBTI people almost completely invisible and vulnerable to discrimination. This needs to be redressed as a matter of urgency. As I mentioned in my submission, an audit of legislation, regulatory standards, policies and guidelines which drive programs across levels of government is needed. As I outlined, this has occurred in the US and overlaps with other areas that are not aged-care specific, such as death, taxes, superannuation, medicare but these are particularly important when we are talking about older GLBTI people whose life histories mean they may not register their relationships and they may not even call themselves gay or lesbian. The legal and policy framework needs to do the job of protecting those who have been living in fear of discrimination for many decades. The Commission and the State Tribunals and Boards could take the initiative and begin the process of such an audit. The audit will tell us what we need to change, in detail. For example, the Residents Rights Charter and Agreement for Nursing Homes used to include sexual orientation in its list of areas of rights and freedoms. Its now gone. On a more positive note GLBTI organisations and agencies across Australia are taking up ageing issues and could assist such an audit. I know that you have heard and will hear from many of these organisations in your deliberations. There are several activist organisations of GLBTI older people themselves who will play a crucial role in any audit or examination of discriminatory procedures. My submission mentions several of these organisations, which are presenting in a symposium in Sydney in Nov, at the Australian Association of Gerontology Conference, which this year listed gay and lesbian ageing on its call for papers, the first time this has happened. The time for an audit is overdue. I want to table a second document the hot off the press Gay and Lesbian Issues in Psychology Review a peer review journal which has devoted an entire issue to GLBTI ageing in Australia. Slowly we are building an evidence base but as I emphasised we cannot afford to wait until the weight of evidence is substantial, as people are suffering in silence now. An audit along the lines of the report Outing Age from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington DC would assist us to develop a picture of what needs to change to ensure the economic safety of GLBTI older people and those who are employed to assist them and are also GLBTI. The discrimination which those employed and silent within the aged care industry is another matter, but is not unrelated to those I have raised today. Workers within the industry have spoken to me about this. I commend the Commission for its interest in aged care and thank you for the opportunity to speak to my submission.     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