Our Mission
​Improve and protect the quality of life of older LGBT adults in North Texas through coordination and collaborations for health, housing, advocacy, financial security and social services.  

We serve the four largest counties of North Texas; Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, and Denton.  It is estimated (through the assistance of the US Census data and further data analysis from The Williams Institute at UCLA), that the population of this 4- county area of lesbian and gay members age 45 and older is at 195,000 and will continue to rise in the next 10 years to right at 200,000.

The area of focus and priority

HOUSING

A key priority is the LGBT Friendly Senior Housing Inititiave; Implementing a process to determine LGBT Competency of Senior Living Facilities. Phase 2 of this focus will move into the home healthcare sector.   This process will determine where we can recommend the aging LGBT Community to safely seek a housing solution as members of the community move through the aging stages of life.  The focus is publishing LGBT competency ratings, understanding the financial aspects of senior living, and ultimately reducing housing discrimination experiences.

ADVOCACY & EDUCATION

We see that we have a responsibility to educate both the service providers in North Texas on LGBT competency and eliminating discrimination, and we have a responsibility to educate the LGBT community on the growing needs and available resources of the members of the North Texas LGBT community.

Our education has been successful in various ways.  The most significant forum was conducting two major Summits on LGBT Aging.  The first in Collin County at SMU in Plano on July 23, 2016 and the second in Tarrant County, November 12, 2016 at the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth.  These forums reach hundreds of summit attendees and brings both service providers and the LGBT community together for a full day delving deep into the unique needs of the aging as an LGBT person.  These are the first such summits in the history of the LGBT Community in North Texas.
 
This year we have also spent a considerable amount of time teaching and advocating through the Texas Depart of Aging and Disability Services, The Senior Source in Dallas, AARP, 2-1-1 (A toll-free call to 2-1-1 connects you to a community resource specialist in your area who can put you in touch with local organizations that provide critical services – we have trained 66 operators and updated their resource guides to refer to vetted LGBT competent resources when available. We have also entered a “memorandum of understanding” stating we will train these operators at least every 6 months.

We have also created a Board level committee on legislation and recruited/activated a large group of volunteer advocacy allies for monitoring and affecting Texas state level legislation.  This year this body has researched possible legislation gaps in Texas State law and partnered with existing key advocacy groups such as Equality Texas and The Senior Source to bring the aging LGBT constituent into the conversation.

SOCIAL SERVICES

As with all aging population, isolation is a significant challenge.  However, this challenge is greater in the LGBT community due to family structure and with many individuals relying totally on “families of choice”.  Many in the LGBT community have no children.  Many in the community have been cut-off from their biological families due to discrimination and a lack of loving acceptance.  Collaboration across the entire North Texas spectrum of LGBT service providers will be developed because the needs are so great.

HEALTH

There exists a need to publish a list of LGBT competent practitioners for North Texas.  Today it is not clear where there are safe and respectable service providers to administer medicine in consideration of unique family situations of the lesbian and gay community.  Then serving the transgender community, the complexities and the needs for training increases.  Also, there exists a significant need of getting LGBT competency into the medical schools.  Graduating students in the medical fields are revealing that LGBT competency and specific expertise is not part of the graduating acumen or criteria, and again, that almost zero training is provided to health care workers for members of the transgender population, and particularly geriatric transgender medicine is even more unique, again with inadequate training in today’s academic environment. 

In February 2018, the CFA LGBT Board of Directors conducted its annual retreat.  In this retreat these priorities were set and voted on by a quorum of the Board.