Ep03 – Dignity in Care: 2SLGBTQ+ Seniors' Journey with Darren Usher

EP 03 Darren Usher

Hannah Tepoorten: [00:00:00] Welcome to When I'm 64, the podcast that delves into the multifaceted aspects of growing older. I'm your host, Hannah Tepoorten. And today we have a lovely guest joining us. Darren Usher, a dedicated advocate for the 2SLGBTQI+ seniors community. He serves as the chair of the board of Dignity Senior Society, a nonprofit organization based right here in Vancouver, B.C.. With over 12 years of experience, the DSS is committed to serving queer seniors while collaborating with individuals, organizations and different services that provide support.

Darren will be sharing with us the inspiring journey of DSS, which began as a housing project, and has since expanded its scope into community building, seniors health, end of life planning and financial assistance. Their organization's evolution demonstrates the profound impact it has had on the lives of 2SLGBTQI+ seniors, and how to address their unique needs holistically.

In our [00:01:00] inaugural episode, we had the privilege of speaking with Rustam Sengupta, the founder of Tuktu Care, which proudly sponsors "When I'm 64."

Together, we explored the prevalent issue of social isolation amongst the senior population. We briefly touched on the significance of matchmaking and ensuring that individuals feel comfortable with their caregivers, emphasizing the importance of shared understanding based on cultural backgrounds, languages, and more.

Within the queer seniors community this understanding is even more crucial, as they are often forced to seek acceptance and empathy.

Today we are fortunate to have Darren with us, who will guide us deeper into this topic, shedding light on the challenges and solutions within the queer seniors community.

Darren Usher: My name's Darren Usher. I'm the chair of the board of Dignity Senior Society. We're a non profit B.C. Organization and we've been around for 12 years. We serve the 2SLGBTQI+ seniors community and the persons, and services that [00:02:00] work with them. 12 years, we started as a housing project.

We've morphed since then. 2018, we restructured and we focus on housing, community building, which is really, connecting our seniors and,breaking their isolation and, giving a sense of belonging. and then we work on health, seniors health, and we work on,end of life planning and finances.

So they're the four areas. In the three areas of work, we have three action points. We, work with advocacy. We do a lot of advocacy work with government with the B.C. Seniors, Advocate, and various organizations. Then we will do, collaborations, similar to what we're hoping to do with TukTuk.

As it would be either training staff or, working on volunteer systems that will support our 2SLGBTQI seniors. So we advocate, collaborate, and we give [00:03:00] information, so lots of information on our website, and there's two audiences, one are the 2SLGBTQI seniors, and the other is the service providers, community there.

working with long term care and assisted living facilities, in home services, and then just, general senior services. we like to say that we put the queer and trans and two spirit into the seniors system and the seniors into the queer and trans and two S system.

Hannah Tepoorten: Awesome. And what are some of the, most common stories you hear from queer seniors about their biggest concerns when it comes to aging and, facing these, different care systems?

Darren Usher: Yeah, I think a lot of fear of systems. I think a lot of the training we do is looking at the history of our community members. And if we go back, it used to be illegal to,homosexual sexual acts were illegal. But it built into just all [00:04:00] queer and trans being illegal, in the eyes of many people in society.

And then it was a mental illness in the DSM up until 1974. And it was illegal up until 1969. The seniors that grew up prior to that, they grew up in a very oppressive system. Many of them had to hide their sexual and gender identity. Some of them entered into heterosexual marriages, in order not to take on their sexual and gender identity and to try and hide it. There was a lot of oppression of that community through the fifties and sixties. There was a purge from the government, which was a government and the military. the RCMP, surveilled our community members that were working in government and in the military.

Because they were afraid that, it would be very easy to blackmail, a person that was suspected of [00:05:00] being, queer or trans, and the enemy would blackmail them and get state secrets out of them. And that led to a lot of people being fired, once they got fired, they were pretty much outed to their family and their friends and often lost their family and friends.

And actually many of those people ended up committing suicide. It affected a small number of people at the time, but it affected our whole community in terms of the kind of Chinese Whispers that went around that community, that people, shared stories and it became pretty much a bit of a horror, a horror period in our history.

Those are the people now that are hitting the senior systems, and naturally, they have a lot of mistrust of systems, a lot of mistrust of government.And a great fear of going back into that oppressive, kind of culture, a lot of those people have spent the last 40, 50 years, finding their place in community and [00:06:00] building their place in community, and now, the fear is that they're going back to that time that they actually remember when it was, pretty awful to live, and that's not what they're looking forward to at the end of their life.

And, sometimes it does, turn into reality. We have people, in Ladner, and Abbotsford that have never left those areas. And their biggest fear is that they're going back into a housing, unit or long term care facility with the bullies that bullied them at school. And that's re-traumatizing them.

And, like I say, it's not. the stresses you want to go through at the end of your life when you have enough going on with health concerns and aging.

Hannah Tepoorten: Adding some figures to the insight shared by Darren, according to a study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 2010, a staggering 43% of LGBTQ seniors reported mistreatment or discrimination in long term care environments. Even more concerning, 81% of participants [00:07:00] believed that staff would discriminate against them based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Further insights from the Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Elders, also known as SAGE, in 2011 revealed that LGBTQ seniors were more likely to live alone, be single, and without children compared to their heterosexual peers, putting them at a higher risk of social isolation.

Moreover, the National Senior Citizens Law Center reported in 2012 that LGBTQ seniors faced increased isolation due to a lack of family support, fear of discrimination, and limited access to LGBTQ affirming community resources. Additionally, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2014 found that LGBTQ older adults were more likely to delay or avoid seeking health care due to past experiences of discrimination and fear of mistreatment.

These statistics emphasize the urgent need for change and highlight the importance of [00:08:00] providing inclusive and supportive care for queer seniors. Now let's turn our attention back to Darren and learn more about the I'm going to be talking about specific ways he and DSS work with long term care providers to create a safer and more welcoming environment for these seniors.

Darren Usher: We will do training with any facility that approaches us. We did training at the BC Care Providers Conference a couple of weeks ago, where we managed to connect with many facilities. And there is a great, appetite to do the work. just a lot of not knowing how to do it. So I think that's where we're trying to fill the gap is connect with individual, organizations or facilities and just talk to them about their specific needs.

And what they would like to see happen and what's realistic for them. There's a lot of appetite for, equity, diversity, and inclusion. And what's happening is, I think it's being translated from a workplace, policy [00:09:00] system, where it works quite well, but it's just being, transposed onto a residential system where it's much more nuanced.

And so what we're asking them to do is think of equity, inclusion, diversity in a contextual sense. So look at what you actually want to achieve. when you talk about diversifying your residents, for example. As much as we advocate for our community members to have an appropriate space, we also advocate for all the seniors who grew up at that time who have a strong, aversion to, homosexuality and trans.

They need a space too. It's that we need spaces that... the values and beliefs are put up front so that we can make an informed choice of which space we'd like to go into. And I think that's not, translating very well right now. What's happening is diversity and inclusion for a [00:10:00] lot of people is saying we need to be everything for everybody.

And that. creates some of the problems that we're seeing. We're mixing, trans and queer seniors with, homophobic and transphobic seniors, and it's not good for either party.

Hannah Tepoorten: You mentioned DSS started in regards to really thinking about housing for seniors. I believe you guys did a study, or looked and did a lot of research based on that. what were some of the findings and what has that landscape looked like within Vancouver?

Darren Usher: Yeah, so our founder of the organization actually had the dream of a building that was dedicated to 2SLGBTQI seniors, and, maybe some kind of, campus of care with some assisted living and some,more intensive, care living, and then maybe some palliative care. And I think the idea and the dream is great.

It is working in other parts of the world. There's a lot of those,[00:11:00] buildings and systems working in the U.S., in Europe, and even now in Toronto, they've just opened a similar space. Vancouver in the low mainland and B.C. doesn't have any kind of space like that. we did a lot of feasibility study around that.

and it was really the cost of housing here that made it not feasible. We thought we could get together the capital money to build the building. But when we looked at the feasibility of one, one resident, the cost of sustaining that resident was 3,500 per month and that was in 2012, so I can't imagine what it would be now.

And that was just not feasible for a non profit to subsidize that amount of money. and a lot of people that can afford that don't need our services.

Hannah Tepoorten: I do want to just ask one more question. Really? just about, you brought up social isolation. Specifically, and I'd love to hear, you just expound [00:12:00] on, how that affects queer seniors specifically, and the, additional, conditions.

Darren Usher: I think it's a little bit of a two edged sword. What I think is that we're very good at isolating ourselves. We've had to protect ourselves our whole life. a lot of people, if they grew up in the fifties, they really had to protect themselves in terms of being attacked,by community, by society, and so we're very good at that.

And what I see often is that there'll be one senior going to, a primarily heterosexual, facility, long term care or assisted living, and they will be sitting in the corner. And I have to question, how much are you self isolating as opposed to this community is isolating, and I think it's both, but there's work to be done on both sides, so I think more, we would like to, as an organization, offer more support to a senior in that situation to help them integrate into a [00:13:00] facility and that would be us sending in some volunteers that could do some advocacy work for them, that could make them feel comfortable, make the other residents feel comfortable with them. The other thing is that, we just, want to share our story at the end of our life.

And if everybody else is talking about their children and their grandchildren, it's difficult for us to take part in that conversation. It's also difficult for, maybe heterosexual people to listen to our exploits through our life. The lover we had on the beach at 18, people are not so interested in that. Whereas if you were talking to other queer and trans people, they would be just natural stories that you would share with each other.

That isolation component, I think, goes both ways, and there's work to be done on both sides. Again, if we could identify some services that were, culturally appropriate. And I say [00:14:00] that in the broadest terms, because many of our community want to live with their straight friends. So it's really not a queer trans space, it's a space that has a set of values that those residents share.

There are other parts of the heterosexual community, such as BDSM,and that community that also would share that space, because they share some of the values. Equally, there are people in the queer, trans, and two spirit community that have different values that want to be in another space.

And so your gender identity and your sexual identity doesn't have to be your primary identity. A lot of people might put their religious beliefs or their cultural beliefs before their sexual.it gets quite complicated once you start to pull it apart. I often start presentations by saying, I'd like you to think about, this acronym that we use, 2SLGBTQI+++. [00:15:00] That acronym is only thrown together because we're not heterosexual.

However, within that acronym, there's Hugely diverse needs, often conflicting needs. So when you start to pull all that apart, it, it does get really complicated.

Hannah Tepoorten: All right. is there anything things that you, at DSS are really looking forward to?

Darren Usher: Yeah, we, we just got funding for our first staff member, so we're really looking forward to that. We've been a very dedicated working board of ten people up to now. Our strategic plan has always said we need at least two staff, so our first one will come on very soon. And we're really pleased with that, and we hope that builds a lot of capacity for us.

That'll allow us to bring on a lot more volunteers, which will build the capacity of the organization. But we're just really pleased by the number of people and organizations that contact us that have, an appetite to do the work. And we think [00:16:00] we can do a good job in fulfilling their needs.

When people ask us to do a presentation or have a meeting with them, we like to have a pre meeting so that we can tailor the presentation to exactly what they need, pitch it at the right level, and have the right content that they're looking for. If we work with people working in home care, for example, we'll often talk about what happens when you go into a queer, trans, or two spirit home? How might you build relationships? Do you have a name tag that you can put your pronouns on? Might you want to wear a rainbow badge? it sounds, a little coy, but it can have a huge effect on a person.

Hannah Tepoorten: Something that's outward facing versus the person having to find out.

Darren Usher: Yeah, I think because as a queer person, I'm always guessing what this other person thinks and how much I can disclose and what can I talk about. So there's some kind of [00:17:00] interaction there where you're not prying, but you're allowing space for them to understand that it's okay to share that or to say that.

And that can be a tricky thing. Everybody's unique, so it's hard to say, "Do it this way." We often talk about, we, we don't believe in, cultural competency, we think that's only available if you're within that community, but we ask people to build their cultural awareness, and then their cultural acumen, so you can get some awareness, but you need the acumen to know which parts of that awareness to use with each individual.

So it's no good just getting some awareness and applying it to every 2SLGBTQ person you meet. That's not gonna work. You need the acumen to be able to differentiate what might work with this person and what you might just keep in your pocket.

Hannah Tepoorten: Great. All right. Thank you so much, Darren. I really appreciate it. Appreciate your time.

Darren Usher: Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for the interview. [00:18:00] And anytime we can connect, we'd love to do training with your staff. We're looking for organizations that we can build a relationship with that we can trust. And then we can refer our community members to them because we trust that you're going to treat them well.

Hannah Tepoorten: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of "When I'm 64." We extend our heartfelt wishes for happy pride to our listeners in Vancouver listening the week this comes out and special thanks to Darren for sharing today. DSS is dedicated to bridging this gap by collaborating with long term care providers, offering training programs, and advocating for culturally competent care.

As Darren mentioned, Canada has seen some housing projects specifically designed for queer seniors, like the Rikai centers in Toronto. The Rainbow Wing, a result of a decade long process, provides an inclusive space with 25 beds, while hosting events like drag shows and other queer performances for its residents.

We hope to see many other [00:19:00] projects like this come to fruition, both within Canada and elsewhere. In our upcoming episodes, we hope to explore for other kinds of unique co housing initiatives for seniors and how they enhance quality of life and community connections. We would like to take a moment to express our gratitude to our sponsor Tuktu Care, who recognizes the importance of neighborly trusted care.

They are actively working on implementing and always improving cultural competency within their network, ensuring that seniors and families receive compassionate care, that respects their unique backgrounds and identities.

To stay connected and join us in more meaningful conversations to these vital topics, remember to subscribe to our podcast.

Let's continue exploring diverse experiences of aging and strive to provide compassionate care for all.