Caregiver Support

EPIC, Empath Partners in Care, provides HIV prevention, testing, treatment and support across six locations in the Tampa Bay area. It is part of Empath Health, and it serves a population that includes a large number of people who have been living with HIV for decades and are now aging with it. Services include free HIV testing and home test kits, an HIV medical home, medical case management, counseling, PrEP and TelePrEP, pharmacy services, housing assistance, food pantries and meals, support groups and financial assistance. A separate program, TOPWA, supports pregnant people living with HIV. That combination matters for older adults specifically. Long-term survivors often need case management, housing help and food support at the same time as medical care, and having them in one organization removes a lot of the coordination burden that otherwise falls on the person themselves. Phone numbers differ by county: Pinellas is (727) 328-3260 and Hillsborough is (813) 237-3066. Costs are not published in full, and financial assistance is available.

Lower Adirondack Pride serves the LGBTQIA+ community of Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties in upstate New York, producing events, running advocacy and offering direct programs. Its services include mental health counseling, case management, advocacy and support for people who are unhoused. Case management in particular is worth knowing about for an older adult trying to navigate benefits, housing or care in a rural county with few affirming options. Nothing on the organization's site is aimed specifically at older adults, so contact them and ask. Services are free. The organization operates from a post office box in Glens Falls rather than a walk-in office, so contact is by phone or email.

Peninsula Family Service is a San Mateo nonprofit serving people from birth through later life. Its older-adult work is built around peer counseling, volunteer support and the Fair Oaks Adult Activity Center, and is aimed at health, mobility and independence rather than at care. The peer counseling program is substantial: the organization reported 58,507 service hours delivered by peer counselors in 2023. Eligibility, costs and office hours are not published. Call to ask what applies to your situation, and to confirm which programs are currently running at Fair Oaks.

LAASN, the LGBTQ+ Aging and Abilities Support Network, is a program of Shanti Project in San Francisco. Shanti has worked on isolation and peer support since the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and LAASN applies that model to LGBTQIA+ older adults and people with disabilities. Peer support is the core of it. Isolation is not a soft problem in later life: it is associated with worse health outcomes, and LGBTQIA+ elders are markedly more likely than their peers to be aging without a spouse or adult children. Eligibility, hours and costs are not published on the organization's public pages. Call the main Shanti number and ask for LAASN.

TurnOut is a volunteer organization founded in 2015 that recruits and supports volunteers for queer and trans grassroots organizations. It describes its work as the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. It operates across several California regions including the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County, and is based in Oakland. Programs include locally organized Take Action volunteering, trainings, organizational support and mutual aid coordination. For an older LGBTQIA+ adult, TurnOut is most useful in two directions. It is a route into volunteering, which is one of the more reliable protections against isolation in later life, and it is the reason many smaller elder-serving queer organizations have enough hands to run their programs at all. Volunteering is free and the organization accepts donations. It has no walk-in office and no published phone number, so contact runs through the website.