LGBTQI+ social exclusion causes loneliness, abuse and early death

Older LGBTQI+ people having losts of the Opening Doors charity that acted as an umbrella organisation for older LGBTQI+ people back in the summer of 2024, a further blow in London for the community was the closure of the YMCA in Great Russell Street. 
 
It appears that services for older LGBTQI+ people are falling away at a time they should be being bolstered due to concerns around social welfare and loneliness negatively affecting health outcomes amongst older people both within the LGBTQI+ community and in the wider population.   

Noel Glynn had been a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front in London in 1970. He and his partner Ted Brown had spent most of their lives campaigning for LGBTQI+ rights and equality only for Noel to be abused by staff at a Croydon care home where he had been placed by Lewisham Council.  He died before he could access the £30,000, he had been awarded due to the abuse he received on account of his sexuality.

Noel’s story highlights several issues facing the 388,000 people of Greater London that identified as LGBTQI+ in the 2021 Census. To put that population into perspective it is as many people as live in Bournemouth and Poole in Dorset. 

The first issue is the lack of provision for social contact for older LGBTQ+ people.  The second, highlighted by Noel’s case, is a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of older LGBTQ+ people and their needs in the Health and Care sectors. A third is a growing issue with increasing numbers of HIV positive people reaching ages due to advancements in medicine they had no expectation of reaching and the lack of knowledge in the general population around what those advances mean. 
 
This leads directly to the abuse and stigmatisation of older LGBTQI+ people as older LGBTQI+ have little representation, and those with HIV even less. Older people are reporting rising discrimination, abuse, and stigmatisation. Older gay people are finding themselves marginalised, disenfranchised, isolated, and find themselves socially excluded and or forced back into a ‘closet’ they may have left decades before. 
 
Bill Hopkinson of LGBT Seniors in Newham, has been organising social meetings and support lunches for his members for some time.   
 
The potential for expansion of these services and introduction of new initiatives is ongoing. Bill told me ‘We have a grant application (£9000) for a calendar of all events for older LGBT across London. This is for signposting events for people. The grant funding will be used on a part-time worker to liaise with and find groups who put on events. ‘Publishing and distributing a monthly calendar to highlight events and increase opportunities for everyone.’ 
 
Lunches for those over 50 living with HIV are part of the provision provided by Positive East at their Stepney Green headquarters. London Friend hosts twice monthly meetings over for 50s LGBTQI+ meetings in King’s Cross. Further meetings take place at the LGBT community centre at Blackfriars and at a variety of other locations across the Greater London area. 
 
Because of the way Census data is collected it is also possible that LGBTQI+ people are not being fully counted. Many may live with relatives who are not aware of, or dismiss, a family member’s sexuality. Others may simply not declare due to potential stigma, abuse, or discrimination.   
 
The data tells us the LGBTQ+ population is spread across the entire Greater London area with several ‘hotspots’ mainly around the Inner London Boroughs.
 
The data for East London shows the remarkable drop off in numbers from inner to outer London and shows that any borough-by-borough provision would be very unequal, therefore any provision would have to cross some borough boundaries or be Greater London wide in application. Ian, an older gay man and activist with Act-Up (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power. a campaigning group first set up in the USA in 1987 to bring attention to government the lack of action around the AIDS epidemic) was very concerned with the welfare of older LGBTQI+ people in relation to access to mainstream services.’’ People living in London are not well informed, they think HIV was so long ago and that it no longer poses a problem. He added that people also seemed unaware that those on medication for HIV are no longer able to pass on the infection.    

 
Ian also felt that the Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London could do more to ensure that those working in the social care sector outside the sexual health remit are better informed as to the needs of HIV+ people specifically and LGBTQI+ people in general. 

Jack Summerside, Head of Health and Well Being at Positive East, explained in detail the provisions his organisation has available for anyone living with HIV. ’’We have our over 50s lunches that have been running for the last year, this is open to all demographics that come to Positive East. We also run diverse social groups for all demographics and there is a cross over in attendance, just because the over50s group exists it does not exclude them from the other groups’‘    
 
Jack added ‘Our main offer is through advice services on poverty, debt, housing advice, making sure people are getting their pension credit and other benefits. There is also the area of financial planning for people with HIV that simply did not expect to have reached an older age’    
 
Future plans include launching a befriending service to start early in the New Year with trained volunteers offering a telephone call on a regular basis to ensure that people interacting with Positive East are supported.  
 
There are also plans to support people going to and from hospital as a way of building encouragement to engage with mainstream health provision. Interaction with mainstream medical services is often highlighted as an issue by older LGBTQI+ people, especially amongst those living with HIV . 
 
Jack talked about plans to work on mentoring and goal setting along with financial planning for older HIV+ people, as many had not expected to reach older ages and are now doing so due to advances in medication.  

He then questioned the value of a coordinator at Ministerial or Greater/Local Authority level and any subsequent appointing of ‘czars’ spending money that could instead be done by HIV organisations reaching out to Age UK, in turn they reach out to social services, who reach out to other organisations using a more systematic approach. This would free up that money to be spent on better direct services where needed. 
 
Tresca, an HIV tester with Positive East calls for more LGBTQI+ care homes and social housing provision, and that ’social services departments and the care sector need to be better informed.’ She also felt that things needed to be better coordinated and that someone appointed at GLA level would be useful in this respect. 
 
Loneliness is a known killer for people of all ages. A report in issue 10,396 of the Lancet dated July 2023 stated,’ The harms to health are clear. Poor social connections are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, infectious diseases, impaired cognitive function, depression, and anxiety.’  
 
Health and Well-being. Older LGBTQI+ people will be less inclined to discuss health conditions if they feel stigmatised, this will increase for those that are HIV positive. Specific provision needs to be identified and funded; this includes some form of ‘end of life’ provision where concerns may be raised in terms of relatives not respecting the LGBTQI+ persons wishes.     
 
The idea that these things can be solved with £9,000 and a calendar of events is not enough, we need coordinated approaches and specific training across the health and social welfare sectors that consider the specific needs of LGBTQI+ people as they reach more advanced ages.  
 
The LGBTQI+ community has been very good at supporting itself and being able to raise awareness of issues through activism over the last 50 year and there are something approaching 30 organisations that could have input into provisions for older LGBTQI+ people. Many of these are led by older LGBTQI+ people themselves, but better coordination and the sharing of best practice can only improve results. 
 
Success in engaging with the LGBTQI+ community would highlight how successful such projects could be across the wider Greater London population and within its very diverse communities. This can only help in preventing poor health outcomes and deaths due to loneliness and disenfranchisement for older people in general. 
 
Ellen Jones, in her book Outrage (2025, Bluebird) highlights how worsening health outcomes are affecting the LGBTQ+ population as a whole. She criticises the lack of monitoring and therefore the lack of robust data in this area.  
 
She goes on to quote a 2024 study of 100,000 nurses showed that bisexual and lesbian women in the cohort died 26% sooner than their heterosexual counterparts.  
  
With the recent report that young people 16- 25 are four times more likely than they were a decade ago to declare themselves LGBTQ+ this can only mean that more people over 50 will also be more likely to do so. With improved outcomes in HIV treatments this will mean more LGBTQ+ people will need specific services from the Health and Social Care sector. 
 
There will also be more older people from other minority groups. We will all want to have specific services to suit our needs. If the current situation persists then there will be more Noel Glynn’s and more angry partners and relatives. 
 
The current health minister, Wes Streeting (who identifies as a gay man) needs to hear the call, better social and health care for older people from all social groups should not be optional, it must be a right.