Growing Older: Perspectives on LGBT Aging

LGBT older adults experience issues and challenges that are unique, including institutional heteronormativity, heterosexism in organizations, and homophobia among caregivers and social service providers. This book presents a diverse group of scholars, activists, social service providers, and researchers from around the globe examining current research, practices, and policies on aging among LGBT individuals. This revealing source lays out the significant challenges faced not only by this aging sexual minority population, but also for their social service providers—and those who train them.

The chapters explore the Greater London area Polari Project, the adjustments made in the long-running HIV support group at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and the Liberation Psychology workshops in Ireland for lesbian and transgendered persons. This volume can serve as an excellent teacher resource for engaging undergraduate and graduate students in various professions who will be working with older LGBT adults. This text is extensively referenced and includes tables to clearly present research.

This book is a valuable source for program administrators and supervisors, human behavior researchers, psychologists and psychotherapists, social planners and policy specialists, community developers and organizers, case managers, direct service practitioners involved with LGBT communities, educators, and students.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services.

James T. Sears is Professor of Education at Penn State University and specializes in sexuality issues in curriculum studies and U.S. history. He edits the Journal of LGBT Youth and has been a Research Fellow at the Center for Feminist Studies at the University of Southern California, a Fulbright Senior Research Southeast Asia Scholar, a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, and a consultant for the J. Paul Getty Center for Education and the Arts. His biography is included in the Dictionary of International Biography, Who’s Who in American Education, Contemporary Authors, and Who's Who in America.