By Josh Jennings
HEALTH
Dr Catherine Barrett, an elder rights advocate, says she's hearing more and more stories of LGBTI elders coming out or transitioning later in life but they don't always amount to the good news story they could.
Dr Catherine Barrett works with Noel Tovey AM on the program for the Dementia and Love symposium in Melbourne.
Many of the testimonies touch on the conflict older individuals experience with their own families. Often with their adult children, adds Barrett.
It's a scenario she is endeavouring to change.
"There are some beautiful examples of very functional and supportive families, where someone has come out or transitioned late," she says.
"What I'd like to do is showcase those stories as a way of saying to people in the community, 'If your grandma gets herself a girlfriend in her 80s ... embrace her."
Barrett is the director of Celebrate Ageing, a national program she founded last year to challenge ageism and build respect for older people.
She steers significant projects devoted to promoting the sexual rights of older people, empowering LGBTI elders and engaging older communities through art and story-based approaches.
Barrett, an advocate for elder rights for three decades, spent her early career as a nurse unit manager in a residential aged care facility. She was influential in the development of Australia's first sexual health policy in 1998 and has dedicated most of her time this century to academia, establishing a sexual health and ageing program within La Trobe University's Australian research centre in sex, health and society along the way (in 2012).
Although Barrett enjoyed an influential academic career, she left La Trobe last year to devote herself to Celebrate Ageing.
While continuing to fund herself as an academic might have entailed undertaking research she didn't necessarily want to prioritise, her current job is proving her most rewarding professional experience, she says.
"While the funding was getting harder and harder," says Barrett, "my vision was getting clearer and clearer. I knew exactly what I wanted to do."
2017 is shaping up to be an important year for Barrett, involving grant applications, facilitating educational events such as a Dementia and Love symposium (a first-of-its kind national event exploring the role of love in the lives of people with dementia), film-making and co-editing a Routledge book on the sexual rights of elder people.
She says all the stories she's hearing from the older people along the way are too important to go unheard and they inform her sense of duty.
"My job is responding to their stories," she says. "That's where the agenda for my work comes from ... community elders are reshaping the program through their stories."