Report calls for care homes for LGBT people

Older LGBT people in Scotland are concerned about having to hide their sexuality when they start receiving care, a new study has found.

The report by the LGBT Health and Wellbeing charity calls for care homes and assisted living facilities specifically for LGBT people.

Contributors said they were unable to be open about their sexuality and shared accounts of discrimination.

There is currently no LGBT-specific care facility in Scotland.

The report contains anonymous personal testimonies including one man who described a visit from a care worker who left after seeing photographs of his gay wedding and drawings of him by his partner in intimate settings.

Another man, a retired schoolteacher, had been living as an openly gay man until he had to move into residential care.

He said that he was no longer in contact with the LGBT+ community and described himself as a "retrosexual", meaning he was not considered a sexual person any more.

SNP MSP Kevin Stewart said it was unacceptable to have a situation where people could not be themselves

In the report, the group said a coalition should be built to address the housing and social care needs of older LGBT people.

Donald MacAskill, chief executive of Care Scotland, which represents the independent care sector, said that it was unacceptable for care workers to display beliefs, attitudes or behaviours that discriminated against individuals.

"The care home is a place of work," he said.

"If you have personal attitudes and behaviours which don't concur with the environment you are working in then those should be left at the door.

"All employers in the care sector should be making sure that the care experience is one which is positive, especially as so many people are in a care home at the end of their life."

SNP MSP Kevin Stewart said he had met the LGBT age action group during his time as a Scottish government minister.

He told BBC Scotland's Drivetime programme: "We have to make sure that we live up to the ambition of making the Scottish Care service person-centred and that means we have to do things differently and listen to people from the LGBT community.

"We cannot have a situation where people can't be themselves.

"If you feel the need to hide who you are in the place you are living in then that is shocking.

"It certainly made me think, as an ageing gay man, what will happen to me as I age and need care? We need to get this right for everyone."