Louisa Smith

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people living with dementia have diverse and complex support needs. Previous research shows that after lifetimes of discrimination, LGBTQ+ people with dementia often do not have families they can rely on and do not want to use health or aged care services because of bad experiences in the past. This lack of access to supports makes volunteer community visitors crucial to the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people living with dementia. The national Aged Care Volunteer Visitor Scheme (ACVVS) — funded by the Australian Government — supports volunteers to foster friendship, companionship and connections by visiting socially isolated older LGBTQ+ people. The growing numbers of LGBTQ+ people living with dementia present a particular challenge for the ACVVS. Organisations that support community visitors for LGBTQ+ older people around the country recognise that suspected or diagnosed dementia often makes visiting more challenging. 

In this project, Dr Louisa Smith designed resources that aimed to support volunteer visitors to engage with LGBTQ+ people living with dementia. These resources were co-designed by people with living experience and addressed volunteer visitor skills, capacity and emotional experience to allow community visitors to make and maintain connections, friendships and companionship with LGBTQ+ people living with dementia. These resources, including cheat sheets and a visitor guidebook, are now available on ACVVS websites and have been integrated as part of volunteer training.  A community of practice will also be created to support and build volunteer capacity and form a preliminary platform for new research. 

Read more about this exciting project

At the time of the award, Louisa was a Senior Lecturer in the Disability and Inclusion and member of the Institute of Health Transformations at Deakin University, Geelong and an Honourary Senior Research Fellow at AHSRI, University of Wollongong.