Friendly Visitor & Companionship

LGBTQ+ Seniors of the Inland Northwest is a member-driven, supportive and affirming network for older LGBTQIA+ people and their families around Spokane, Washington. Membership is not restricted to seniors. The calendar is social rather than clinical. Regular gatherings include Taco Tuesday on the first Tuesday of each month, potlucks, and Pride events. This is a volunteer network rather than an agency, so there is no office, no phone line and no published hours. Contact is by email, and the group's own site is the place to check what is coming up.

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.

West Suburban LGBTQ+ Senior Services is a program of Chicago Methodist Senior Services, serving LGBT+ older adults and allies in Chicago's western suburbs. The group meets weekly, with both in-person and virtual options, which matters more than it sounds: a virtual option is often the difference between attending and not for someone who has stopped driving. Alongside the group, CMSS runs Senior Connections, an intergenerational friendship program. Chosen family is not an abstraction for many LGBTQIA+ elders, and programs that deliberately build cross-generational connection are one of the few structured answers to that. Meeting times and costs are not published. Contact CMSS to confirm before attending.