We are pleased to publish this special edition of the CordisPulse marking this year’s Pride. Pride is celebrated in the month of June, the same month that the Stonewall riots took place in 1969, a watershed moment in the history of LGBTQ+ rights.

This annual observation provides the opportunity to celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer pride, history and culture. It also gives us an opportunity to highlight the significant work still left to do to address the inequalities faced by LGBTQ+ people.

This Pride month, we have decided to centre our focus on the lives and experiences of older members of the LGBTQ+ community. As a result, this Pulse Special highlights key reports and tools published over the past five years, that have the voices and experiences of LGBTQ+ older people at their heart. These reports illustrate the inequalities faced by older LGBTQ+ people in the sectors of adult social care and health, and how actors in these sectors can make changes to improve outcomes for this group.

A recurring theme of the reports included in this Pulse Special is summarised in the ‘Safe to be me’ guide produced by AgeUK, which states:

“One of the biggest single barriers to good practice in care for older LGBT people is the notion that sexuality no longer matters in old age.”

Many of those in this age group will have lived experience of growing up before the gay liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This means their experiences of what it is and was like to be LGBTQ+, and the challenges they faced, are likely to have been very different from those of younger generations growing up LGBTQ+ in the UK today. This older age group is also now experiencing the further challenge of the intersection of ageism and discrimination in the form of homophobia or transphobia.

A note on terminology: LGBTQ+ acronyms are evolving to reflect the inclusivity of different gender identities and sexualities into the LGBTQ+ community. Since the original acronym’s inception in the 1990s as a way to unite different non-heteronormative communities, alternative versions of the LGBT acronym have been popularised. We have chosen to use LGBTQ+ here, as we feel it best covers the variety of non-heteronormative identities and sexualities that are represented in Pride. The reports in this Pulse Special use different variations of the acronym, so we reflected the acronym used in each report in our summaries

If you would like to discuss any of the issues raised in this month’s Pulse, please do get in touch by emailing stellabutler@cordisbright.co.uk.