Chapter 9: Responsive Evaluationas a Way to Create Space for Sexual Diversity: A Case Example on Gay-Friendly Elderly Care

In the Netherlands, three residential elderly care homes in two major cities collaborated in a responsive evaluation on gay-friendly elderly-care. Worldwide, being homosexual was long considered a religious sin and a psychological and medical abnormality, as well as illegal (Bitterman & Hess, 2016; Keuzenkamp, 2011). From around the turn of the twenty-first century onwards it seems that, at least in Europe and North America, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)¹ people are gaining entrance to mainstream society and social acceptance is increasing (Bitterman & Hess, 2016). In a care context, as more and more people attain old age and an increasing number of LGBT people are open about their sexual identity a ‘new’ population demographic of older LGBT people is established (Bitter-man & Hess, 2016). Addis, Davies, Greene, MacBride-Stewart, & Shepherd (2009) report, however, that the understanding of older LGBT people’s needs with regard to their health, social care, and housing is low and that research on this is scarce.