A £400,000 Lottery grant will offer a hand of friendship to the isolated and the lonely.

An expansion of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Age Scotland project is offering a lifeline to people in Glasgow.

LGBT Health and Wellbeing is already working in Edinburgh, promoting the health, wellbeing and equality of LGBT people in Scotland with a range of programmes and services.

It works with 3000 to 4000 people per year, including 1000 individuals receiving one-to-one support though a helpline, counselling, advocacy and befriending.

The living and family situations of older LGBT people differ significantly from their heterosexual peers.

Research shows that older LGBT people have significantly diminished support networks when compared to the general older population.

They are two-and-a-half times more likely to live alone, twice as likely to be single as they age and four-and-a-half times more likely to have no children to call on in times of need.

LGBT Health and Wellbeing is now recruiting a service manager who will set up the Glasgow group, which will have two staff, by early summer.

It is a much-needed service, according to director Maruska Greenwood.

She says one member of staff will co-ordinate the befriending and the other a social programme and information sessions.

Ms Greenwood said: "That's about the much higher level of fear that LGBT people as they are ageing are expressing about health, financial matters and social isolation.

"Often, if you think about the times people have lived through, they might not have had their partnerships recognised, so people might not have been in civil partnerships.

"Pensions have still not been equalised. There's a real economic disadvantage that people are suffering.

"For women who have been in a same-sex relationship you have that gender inequality multiplied by two."

She says that, as well as people coming out later in life, they have become isolated over time, sometimes because of the loss of a relationship, either through a break up or a bereavement.

"If you're facing bereavement in your 60s or 70s and, as a couple have become quite isolated, in the way older people do, you then, with a bereavement, face the possibility of maybe you've never been that open about your relationship, so you won't necessarily get the same level of support.

"If there hasn't been that recognition of the same-sex relationship when your partner was alive, you're not going to get that support as a grieving partner.

"People then realise how isolated they are, but still want to build social networks. These are the individuals we're hoping this will really help."

The national helpline, 0300 123 2523, operates on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from noon to 9pm.

angela.mcmanus@ eveningtimes.co.uk