The five types of elder abuse webinar

hello and welcome we acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the many lands on which we work and we pay our respects to indigenous Elders past present and emerging sovereignty has never been ceded it was and always will be Aboriginal land elder abuse action Australia is committed to ensuring Equitable and inclusive responses to end elder abuse for people with diverse characteristics and life experiences we EAA honor the older people in our community who have endured abuse and neglect and we note the important contribution their lived experiences make to our work we support the International Convention on the rights of older persons and aspire to one day when everyone can live a life free from abuse I'm Philippa McDonald and this webinar is brought to you by compass.info and elder abuse action Australia e Triple A it's funded by the Attorney General's Department today we're covering the five types of elder abuse psychological or emotional abuse Financial abuse physical abuse sexual abuse and neglect will take you through the evidence the latest data the real life scenarios and what can be done to prevent and respond to elder abuse we invite you to participate in the Q a and I encourage you to ask respectful questions and refrain from identifying anyone and to ask and direct your questions to our wonderful panelists you may find some of the issues we're speaking about today distressing so you can either come back to the recording after tomorrow or please take down this phone number the elder abuse helpline 1-800-353-374 that's 1-800-353-374 an incredible resource if you don't already know it please get to know it is compass dot info that's Compass dot info without further Ado let's meet our imminent panelists Colette Botts is the director family domestic violence and elder law practice at the caxton legal center Collette manages the seniors legal and support service a multi-disciplinary legal and social work program that assists older people who are experiencing or at risk of experiencing elder abuse Colette has practiced in Elder Law domestic violence family law civil law and Child Protection thanks Colleen John demaio is a research fellow at the Australian Institute of family studies he's a member of the research team that conducted the national elder abuse prevalence study in this role he undertook research to investigate the prevalence and dynamics of elder abuse in Australia and Analysis of the characteristics of those who experience elder abuse and Robert Fitzgerald am is the New South Wales aging and disability commissioner he served as a commissioner on the Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse for five years a lawyer by profession Robert was also Community Services commissioner and Deputy Ombudsman in New South Wales and was a commissioner with the productivity commissioner commission for over 10 years Welcome to our panelists thanks for joining us we're gonna actually before we get to you take a poll right at the start and we're asking you what is the most common form of elder abuse is it Financial abuse is it neglect is it physical abuse psychological abuse or sexual abuse so we're asking you our wonderful participants at this webinar today to make a single Choice one choice and we'll get back to the results later on in our webinar so the question again is what is the most common form of elder abuse is it Financial abuse neglect physical abuse psychological abuse or sexual abuse so I can't vote neither can our panelists but you can vote and we ask you to put in your vote and we'll get back to you in about 25 minutes let's now start with you John de Mayo from the Australian Institute of family studies and walk us through what are the five types of elder abuse briefly one by one John thanks Philippa and it's great to be here today as part of the panel to share some of our findings around elder abuse and the five types before I start I'd just like to acknowledge uh the Rangers the traditional Customs the land where I'm meeting today in Melbourne and I pay my respect respects to their eldest past present and emerging as well and any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the audience today um so to answer that question I'm going to be drawing some from some of the findings from our national elder abuse prevalent study it's one of the most comprehensive uh studies of its kind in Australia and I'd like to particularly acknowledge my fellow authors on the report um and particularly Alicia Q who led the study and also the Attorney General's Department who funded the the study and made the research possible so I'll just flick through to the next slide and potentially the next one after that so um based on our study we found an overall prevalence rate of abuse of 15 and this was based on a representative sample of 7 000 older Australians aged 65 years or over and as part of this survey we collected information obviously about their experiences of elder abuse and also was able to collect information on the sub on a third of five subtypes of abuse and so they also collected information about the participants characteristics their social networks psychological and social well-being and also who perpetrated abuse um so as we can see from this slide overall 15 or almost one in seven old restrains experienced elder abuse or important experience of elder abuse and we're also able to collect data on the prevalence of the different types of elder abuse and so the most commonly reported subtype was psychological abuse of 12 percent and then smaller proportions reported neglect three percent of our sample um two percent reported Financial abuse and physical abuse and one percent reported sexual abuse I guess it's also worth noting that four percent or about one in 25 experience multiple types of abuse as well and women were slightly more likely to report experiences of abuse 16 compared to 14 for males so there wasn't a particularly strong uh gendered pattern in our findings although I'll note for two other subtypes which is psychological abuse and neglect women were more likely the reports these two types compared to men in a you know small but statistically significant extent and yes I didn't cheat and um and select psychological abuse as the answer to our poor leader yeah well could you explain the combination of the types of abuse yep so this slide what we're doing is looking at the co-occurring forms of abuse so I guess it's important to note when interpreting this table that as we saw from the previous slide um you know most participants only have one or reported one experience of an elder abuse type so what this table is doing is sort of drilling down to those participants that experienced or reported two or more types and what we can see is that the most common co-occurring elder abuse types were psychological and neglect so this was about 23 of all the participants who reported two or more types and about six percent of participants are reported at least one and then you know next most common was psychological and physical and psychological and financial so again about 21 of those who experience two or more and it's also not uncommon you know where multiple um experiences of elder abuse was reported for there to be three or more uh some types being experienced simultaneously we can sort of see that in the bottom half of the table between two and seven percent experienced psychological abuse with various combinations of either physical Financial sexual or neglect um and I know Colette's going to talk a little bit later about some of her clients who are presenting with multiple experiences of elder abuse so hopefully this data can sort of set the scene there and also really just highlight that where multiple abuse types are occurring it's most often psychological abuse accompanied by those other abuse types look thanks John and psychological abuse been quite the enabler of the other forms of abuse and uh we really appreciate that data which is um the most uh credible and extensive data that we have at the moment uh as well as the work that the New South Wales aging and disability commissioner is doing and and John uh the elder abuse hotline um which you run uh sheds a bit of light in real time of what's happening what is the latest started telling you about the prevalence of elder abuse uh the types of abuse and the trends so thanks very much Philippines great to be with you from the land of the barometrical people um we've just uh yesterday released three years worth of data and it's the most comprehensive data of any agency that deals with reports in relation to abuse so just a couple of things about that we have the help line and during those three years we took about 39 000 calls and then they translate into about 11 000 what we call statutory reports and a statutory report is where there is reasonable grounds to believe that an adult an older person is subject to or at risk of the various forms of yes we've talked about and so that's a really detailed piece of work that these are matters where our team work to actually unpick the issues and then seek to resolve them and including referrals to the police and investigations we conduct so what we've seen is a 40 increase in the number of statutory reports over a three-year period and these are the more serious end of the scale just a second thing I just wanted to wear those who report these matters um about the same percentage of family members are reporting these matters as our Frontline workers and that's a significant change when we started the most group the biggest group of reporters were family members brothers and sisters wanted to complain about the others but that's changing we're more and more Frontline workers are reporting serious matters to us but in the actual details of all the allegations contained in those particular statutory reports which these are sort of the trends we've got psychological abuse is about 40 of all allegations so in since replicates what John was saying the second group is 28 is financial abuse a significant and growing number of allegations in relation to financial abuse we'll talk about why later on the third one which is a major concern is 21 are in relation to neglect and neglect here is of our failure to meet persons support needs medical neglect inadequate clothing and food and of course neglect can be a criminal offense in most jurisdictions physical abuse is eight percent significantly higher than John's and of course sexual abuse is about 0.5 percent uh so those are the categories that we're dealing with but this percentages are different to what John indicated but you would expect them to be because this is the pointy end where people have actually reported matters and they do require significant work um obviously to try to resolve situations but they also involve investigations referral to the police referral to other agencies um and the other last point I just make is yes in our case the majority are in relation to women but that is in part because the highest risk groups are about 75 to 85 years of age and there are simply more women than men at that point in time but nevertheless it is true to say that women are more at risk of most of these forms of abuse gosh and these figures are truly shocking so a 40 increase in statutory reports over three years and uh I want you to drill down if you could on these figures just to to recap on where you see the multiple types of abuse happening so I think all of us can give examples there but I'll just take two or three very briefly psychological abuses you rightfully said Philippa is an enabler there's no doubt about that but one example is physical sorry psychological abuse Financial abuse I'll give you a very simple example of that uh there are two things that happen first is the alleged perpetrator abuser diminishes in the minds of the older person their capacity to deal with their own Affairs so they basically put them down you're not able to do it you're not well enough you've got dementia and so on but the second thing is threat and the most common threat or a common threat is I won't let you see the grandchildren unless you give me the money I won't let you see your friends unless you give me your money I won't let you go out of the house unless you give me the money so this is really control coercive conduct which we'll talk about later is an example of threat but also diminishment of people's ability to actually make decisions and what we find is many of the older people are more than able of making those decisions but they've been so downtrodden by their adult son or daughter mainly they no longer feel they are able to we had one example that she could virtually not go to the bank to make any transactions after six weeks of intervention by ourselves she was going out of the bank by herself able to make all the transactions and that was just within a six-week period of change a second word I think is really concerning to us is neglect because it's a hidden problem and what happens in neglect it's also went to physical abuse and what we might call restrictive practices there is a withdrawal of allowing the person not only to socialize but to access medical care as the regret gets worse they stop even home care and other services coming to the home because of shame because they don't want to see what's happening but often we see neglect and physical abuse physical restraints the walking of people in bedrooms the inability to physically leave the house itself and of course um occasionally full-on assaults the third one won't surprise you is about 10 to 12 percent or sorry 12 percent of our matters deal with abuse by spouse or partners and in that case it is both physical abuse and sexual abuse as well taking place and there is an increasing level of sexual abuse of older women in our community and so there we often see sexual abuse violence and very much part of the domestic violence and family violence scene so these combinations do exist and as John's data shows we would provide it more common that there is in fact a combination of matters um happening but it's that combination that actually disempowers older people uh very significantly but psychological abuse often is the underpinned so that as it is in domestic and Family Violence generally thanks for that Robert I really appreciate it look um the Q a is um coming alive and um I'm just going to address a couple of questions that are coming in early which we will unpack more later in the webinar and uh from Stuart there does not seem to be a lot of things you can do so Robert and Colette could I just ask you a quick quick response to that and we'll unpack it more later on so if I could just make it very simple if you see or are concerned about the conduct it doesn't mean you formed a view there's abuse it means that you're concerned you're seeing something that's not right in many of the jurisdictions including our own there is now somewhere to pick up a phone and talk to us of those multiple pools that go into our helpline that don't turn into cases it's actually just trying to deal with the circumstance explain what's happening and of course Escalade are elevated where there is true risk of harm so in places like South Australia act are solved in other jurisdictions there is now a place you can take those concerns I want to make the point you do not have to form the Judgment that it's abuse that's my job your job is to say I'm concerned it's not getting better and now I can do something about it whereas before I suspect there were very few places you could have gone to and I'm sure Chloe's got other avenues as well and Philippa I think that that question also just illustrates for us that if there's a perception that there aren't that many avenues for people to take that we actually need to increase that awareness but we're certainly going to be unpacking that throughout a conversation today yes thank you very much um so Robert we'll come back to you later for what you see as the warning signs and the drivers particularly around Financial abuse and neglect and um Collette Paxton is a law firm with a difference what makes you uniquely placed to work with people experiencing elder abuse thanks Philippa before I do start I would also like to pay my respects and acknowledge that I'm on the land of the yagara and tourable people so our elder abuse programs at caxton Legal Center are based on a multi-disciplinary lawyer social worker model that recognizes that legal and social issues often coexist and it's also a human rights-based model where we Empower our clients to know their legal rights and to also know the Support options that are available to them so that they can then be the ones to decide which interventions they want to take and we know from the prevalent study and we also see this in our practice that the most common types of perpetrators are family members specifically adult children and we do find that many of our clients simply don't want to take action against their children they don't want their children to get in trouble and to use their words all they want is for the abuse to stop so when they do make that decision that they don't want to go down that legal pathway within our multi-disciplinary practice our social workers can continue to work with the older person to reduce risk and they might do this through safety planning and that safety planning might look like changing the locks to make them feel safer it might be having a plan to call Triple O in case things escalate or it might be making a plan to leave the home safely without actually engaging in any legal process wow and you have two case studies to help us understand the types of elder abuse and how they might present together and of course our q a uh there seems to be uh some questions relating to you know just giving us more examples of what psychological abuse involves because people are really just trying to to understand the various forms and identify so uh could I just say that uh when we're talking about case studies they have been de-identified and permission has been sought from the people involved to talk about their cases so Colette could you talk us about talk us through the first case study you've got yes sure so the first case study that I'll briefly run through illustrates how those different forms of abuse often co-occur and how that actually plays out in practice so we've already gone through the stats so now I'll give us some hard examples so we assisted a lady who had been referred to our service by a concerned friend her daughter and her daughter's partner and her grandchild had moved into her home because they wanted to save up some money so that they would be able to rent a nicer place so our client agreed that they could stay with her for six months but five years later the family were still living in the home and the couple were not contributing financially at all they weren't paying rent they weren't paying for food they weren't paying for bills and our client tolerated this at one stage she had a hip operation and at that time she needed a bit of extra support while she was in recovery and that's when her daughter's Behavior became emotionally abusive she would belittle her mother call her names treat her like a child and isolate her from Friends she would accuse her mother of having dementia as a form of gaslighting there was nothing wrong with her capacity and we've already heard Robert mention this she threatened that she would not be able to see her grandchild if she were to tell them that they had to leave the home so we're already seeing that combination of psychological and financial abuse the daughter also withheld meals so now there's a third layer neglect and initially there wasn't any physical abuse until one day the daughter snapped and she pushed her mother at this stage our client could no longer tolerate that ongoing abuse so she made the decision to leave her own home where she had been living for 40 years and she started to stay at friend's place so friends places so she would basically couch surfing and effectively she'd become homeless in her 80s even at that point she still didn't want to take any legal action against her daughter she did not want her daughter to get in trouble and she was also worried about her grandchild so she stayed in contact with our social worker and after a period of about nine months that was when she was ready to pursue the legal options that were available to her and I then assisted her to obtain a protection order and the court made an order requiring the daughter to leave the home and the daughter was also not allowed to go within 100 meters of her mother so legally this was a great outcome but ultimately we have to acknowledge that this was never the outcome that our client wanted for her life no that's uh and Robert I might bring you in here I hope you've got some thoughts on what Colette's had to say there collector the vast majority of the matters we do with over 61 percent of his abused by adult children against their their parents another 12 or 13 by spouses but the very common element is this whilst they want Johnny to stop hitting them or else they want Johnny to stop stealing from them they will say to you at the end of the day John is really not a bad boy Johnny actually you know um you know is the only person in the family that visits me or cares for me what would happen if Johnny got into trouble and I certainly don't want him to be referred to the police and so in a sense they're in a conundrum and ours is a woman preference jurisdiction that is I'm required to seek their wishes and I'm required to get their consent before we investigate so we do with this issue all the time where they're in a circumstance they wanted to change but they don't want their children to get into trouble and in a sense they certainly don't want the legal responses which collect rightfully as obtained for them and so it is a tricky space and in a woman preference jurisdiction where you're seeking their genuine consent and or wishes we must have to massage this right through in order to get a safe outcome for them but often it's not the outcome they originally thought and sometimes as Colette said it's not the outcome they really want nevertheless um you know we work with them to get the best outcome and also to honor as much of those wishes as we can on the way through now look we've got some very interesting questions in the Q a some of them ranging for from questions about my presenting style and whether I'm ageist but and ageism is our next webinar so I welcome that feedback uh maybe by email and I'll take that on board but uh on a very serious note um that we've had Ben say please always regard the person holding personal enduring power of attorney as exempt from charges of neglect social abuse Etc Robert you're you're nodding your head there one of the emerging Trends and it's a very serious one is the abuse of Powers of Attorney by attorneys I want to be clear sometimes that is because the attorney does not understand their responsibility I have to say the system including the advice they get from lawyers is very inadequate in relation to that but the second one is there is actually abuse being occurred under the power of attorney and we see third parties ingruciate themselves into the lives of older people sometimes they actually become living carers and very soon thereafter he had Powers of Attorney so Powers of Attorney an area of growing concern to everyone and everywhere and our systems are very poor we can go to incap and have powers of attorney changed and I'm sure that's true in various other jurisdictions as well but it is a grave concern so just that somebody's been given a power of attorney um absolutely doesn't mean they're going to do the right thing and quite often they don't so it is an area of concern and of course the other point about is the older person thinks once they've given the power opportunity they can't do anything about it well of course the law says you can revoke it but almost nobody knows that and Nobody Does it until we come along well collateral or anybody else so that area is a concern it's a concern for the legal profession and we're working with the Law Society police and others in relation to those issues and just um to recap for those in New South Wales what's in cat please Robert that's the um tribunal that deals with guardianship matters and there's an equivalent of that in every jurisdiction and Colette would you like to say anything about that about the enduring power of attorney there is just a huge level of misunderstanding from various stakeholders about what an injuring power of attorney means and how it operates and one of my pet hates is that they are so frequently prematurely used there's this assumption that just because it's in place that that a person can then make decisions for an older person when in actual fact that's a document that's only going to be used as a last resort just in case in the future that person can't make their decision so it's basically being used as a tool to diminish somebody's human rights which is not of course what it's there for at all so just uh briefly because this is to empower people uh if you are drawing up an enduring power of attorney or any such document uh what would you say should be the Rules of Engagement with your lawyer and should you be doing that as the only person in the room with your lawyer well people firstly should we just want people to understand that they get to choose the wording of what's in that document any lawyer will tell you that a lawyer needs to speak directly to that person to make sure that they're not being pressured by anybody else and as Robert mentioned places like us we are there to give people that advice on not only how to make an enduring power of attorney but how to revoke one if it is the case that it is being misused so we won't be too defeatist there is hope there are Services we are there to help people to rectify it when those human rights breaches do happen and certainly he's doing a lot of activism here and I think we'll see Across the Nation Movement by law societies and others to substantially improve not only the registration of Powers of Attorney or enduring Powers of Attorney but also the issues about better explanation to both parties both the person giving the power and the actual attorney that's appointed so I think we it as Colette said it's not a totally dark space but there's a lot of abuse in that space at the moment and I would refer people uh because this can be complex it doesn't have to be complex but there's some really good resources on compass.info and this is an area where elder abuse action Australia is also joining forces with everyone for some very strong advocacy in this area particularly at the federal area and campus is an e triple a project Compass dot info so take a look at that website and look uh we're going in a few directions here but I'm just going to quickly address one of the questions in the Q a and ask you Robert what about mandatory reporting of elder abuse so during our legislation we've been established since the 1st of July 2019 roughly the time that the adult safeguarding unit was established in South Australia within the Ministry of Health so we came online we have a slightly different Focus New South Wales we have a very strong focus on holding people to account not only and in addition to keeping people safe in relation to mental reporting my own advice to government is we it is too early to do that we need to understand much more the drivers of the abuse the way it plays out and the lessons out of mandatory child uh reporting of child protection matters gives us reason to pause so I've said to government yes it may be a point we have to have mandatory reporting of some types of abuse in some circumstances but let's really do that based on evidence so let's really understand the drivers of abuse how it's happening and also understand the unintended consequences that come with mandatory reporting so let me clear I'm not opposed to mentoring reporting at some stage I'm certainly of the view that we just need to pause look at the evidence understand it better and then if we are to do that really targeted so it's effective and there are lots of lessons to be learned from other abuse systems including our approaches to domestic violence and importantly in relation to children so that's our approach it's not one that everyone agrees with but that's where we're at at the moment I should say in the ACT it's not a mandatory reporting requirement but the acts introduce specific legislation in relation to elder abuse as a crime and whilst that is not a mandatory reporting jurisdiction that may be a trend we see more and more where there is specific legislation done in with aspects of the matters we're talking about thanks Robert that's also answered another question that we had and um there's some concern from Linda about how invest uh false claims of abuse are investigated and whether there is any um has there any precedence of people getting compensation when they've been falsely accused does anyone have any like to shed on that at the moment um we've uh could allegations be made that are not true the answer is yes and we process those sometimes it's because there's been a family battle and everything that the brother does is seen in a bad life when we investigate it we find that's not true so you might say that's a false allegation um so we do investigate a lot of those matters and certainly there are people that are making allegations which when you look at it I don't have substance to it but I know of nowhere and so the process does work it doesn't you know so but at the moment I'm not sure whether college or John I'm not aware of anyone being sued in a civil case uh for bringing those sorts of matters certainly they can't do that anyway in our jurisdiction that would be highly problematic people that report matters to us are protected it's extremely important legislation if you're a worker or somebody and you report a matter to us if you've done that in good faith you absolutely cannot be prosecuted in any way shape or form so there are Protections in these formal systems but I'm not aware of anybody under a civil civil litigation regime being being um you know had you know being taken to court thank you and we're not covering um the Aged care sector at the moment but uh I'm just wondering uh jurisdiction for uh complaints about elder abuse and the Aged care system if I could have your thoughts please uh you call it whether you're helping people in aged care and whether you have uh and what your capacity is waiting times Etc well we absolutely can assist people who are in aged care who are experiencing elder abuse of some form I mean just because they're living in a residential facility doesn't mean that they're automatically protected I mean a moment ago we were just discussing about how there's so much misunderstanding around enduring Powers of Attorney but as part of that model that I was speaking about earlier we do home visits and Outreach to people and we very regularly will visit people in the nursing home with a lawyer and a social worker to to give them their advice and to explain their options to them so just if I could answer that because it's quite important in our jurisdiction it's very clever every older person in New South Wales is in my jurisdiction and uh but what happens is if it's a matter that would normally do be dealt with by the Aged care quality and safety commission that is a person is a resident in one of those facilities and the abuse is by a staff member or volunteer that matter will get passed to the equality and safety commissioner if however this does happen in aged care it's the family member is continuing to abuse the older person in an aged care facility and that happens we deal with it and sometimes we do joint investigations so in our jurisdiction it's not where you are it's who's doing it so again if it's a matter where the staff member or a volunteer in a residential aged Care Facility it is at the Commonwealth level the age care quality and safety commissioner and she will do that but if it's a family member a neighbor a friend and their abusing then that won't be covered by that jurisdiction and in our case it's us and in other jurisdictions it's other organizations uh the reason we do this is to try to stop duplication um but sometimes we actually do joint investigations in relation to these matters oh look thank you for that that's great and now it's time to get to our poll because I'm wondering um uh I'll ask uh for Compass to bring up the poll what is the most common form of elder abuse uh 47 of you said Financial abuse uh 21 of you said neglect two percent of you said physical abuse thirty percent of you said psychological abuse and one percent sexual abuse so uh that's that's a very interesting poll and I'm just going to whip around uh and I might go to you John um as our data man uh as to what you think of this and um and how that relates to uh what you're seeing and then each of you to comment so John over to you thanks Philippa well it's actually very interesting because as part of the study we also collected uh information from participants about recognition of various sort of elder abuse um items and that poll really reflects our study findings as well that um there's greater recognition of the financial abuse as a type of elder abuse even though you know as we saw from um the actual prevalence it's more common for psychological abuse to be experienced and reported by all the people themselves so it's um it's quite interesting results and really closely mirrors our own findings um but it says people understand that Financial abuse is the the most prominent but it is psychological psychological yeah yeah and um and Collette and Robert what does this tell you well it's yeah it's really interesting that um that those are the results I I think uh it it perhaps it reflects in you know with this particular cohort who's listening today that there's it's easier to understand what Financial abuse is than it is to understand what psychological abuse is I mean I was really pleased that the prevalence data report showed that psychological abuse was reported as as the most prevalent because it shows that there is a greater understanding now but yeah that's really interesting so the second thing is I think in all areas of abuse child abuse domestic violence Family Violence and this um there is in the community a belief that emotional abuse is not real abuse um it's just somebody being nasty to you or somebody being mean um but what we're starting to learn through Child Protection through domestic violence and now in the elder abuse space and the abuse of people with disabilities is in fact it does real harm and I think the point that we raised very early uh the Philippa did that it is an enabler for other abuse so I think the domestic violence area has really taught us that and that's why we've moved to coercive conduct being criminalized in some states so I think in the community emotional psychological abuse does not necessarily look like abuse to many people and it's downplay it's also extremely difficult to prosecute even in child protection there are very few cases where the main allegation is in relation to emotional abuse of children it's always about physical abusive sexual abuse or something else it's actually very difficult to prosecute so but I do think it's part of the community the good thing is it's up to us to change that a little bit but the really important thing is to understand that part of a lot of abuse that takes place Financial neglect or all the other issues we've been talking about and we certainly see that quite a lot well thanks Robert and Colette could I ask you to take us through your second case study and what it tells us about the types of elder abuse and and that intersectionality yes sure so the next case study that I'll touch on um it's a good segue from the conversations we've just been having because it touches on how psychological abuse really infiltrates just about every other type of abuse um we certainly observe in our practice that psychological abuse is present in probably almost every matter that we deal with so we assisted a gentleman who about 10 years ago had contributed two hundred thousand dollars worth of his savings towards purchasing a home together with his son and his daughter-in-law and they agreed that he would be able to live in the granny flat on the property for the rest of his life and at first things were fine a few years later our client re-partnered and his partner would come and stay with him in the granny flat from time to time now this seems to be what triggered the sun becoming emotionally abusive he it was apparent that he had developed an attitude of inheritance protection he was worried that this new partner might interfere with his plans and he didn't approve of the relationship so he became very harassing in an effort to try and drive his father out of the granny flat which would of course mean that he wouldn't have to repay his father that money that he had contributed to the property so the types of behaviors that we were seeing from the Sun were things like he would hose down the dry washing on purpose he keyed his father's car he would disconnect the television and the internet to interfere with his day-to-day life and he would tamper with the water pressure so what we're seeing in this case study is the way that psychological abuse and we've already been talking about this today the way that it facilitates that Financial abuse and the psychological abuse we can see here it's essentially Paving the way to create the perfect opportunity for the sun to commit that Financial abuse he was so harassing and so intimidating towards his father to the point that he was utterly defeated his mental health had deteriorated and eventually he just couldn't tolerate it anymore and he had to leave the granny flat without being repaid his money for some people for many people that's where the story ends but fortunately in this particular case study that I'm talking about today this family actually had a written agreement in place from some from many years prior which helped us to be able to assist him to negotiate to get some of that book most of that money actually returned to him so in this case it was a good news story but it's not always the case so what how's that guy now how how's the gentleman now he is so much better because he's no longer tolering that ongoing abuse and because he's received that money most of that money back he's he was able to buy into a retirement village and and he's much happier now oh look thank you because we need some stories of hope you know when people are enduring so much and uh um and look don't forget the um Elder helpline 1-800-353-374 but I think um that case study really does uh go down to the granular of how that psychological abuse can play out you know what you might think you're imagining is actually happening um and thank you so Robert how do these experiences that Colette is talking about and indeed the results of the poll telling telling us what you're seeing as commissioner when it comes to financial abuse and um what do you see as the drivers for that Financial abuse which you're seeing a big spike in right now well Financial abuse is going to grow dramatically and there's a couple of reasons for that the first is there's a societal shift to when the wealth transfer will take place and this is at the half of it um there is more there's an enormous amount of wealth to be transferred to the Next Generation but it's being delayed because we're living longer sometimes healthier and so the Next Generation my children will have to wait much longer to get that wealth transferred and that's it by up to a decade now the one thing we know about adult children in Australia is they are not patient they are impatient and so if you say to them they've got to wait another 10 years to get their parents wealth I can tell you with absolutely certainty that in fact we're going to see an increase in the level of financial abuse the second thing is banks financial institutions superannuation funds and all are much more attentive to it reporting it more often and so there's a greater Community awareness of the actual abuse so we've got a real increase in abuse and we get an increase in awareness of the abuse um the third thing is that it's also not about just the individual it's about the carers and so one of the issues around Financial abuse is the actual circumstance of the carer so problem gamblers is Keras it almost inevitably will lead to financial abuse of their older parents and problem going in Australia is simply not being dealt with in any way satisfactory but if the rubber hits the road where it's a carer of a vulnerable person Financial pressure housing stress which we see in Australia all of those factors increase the level of stress within the family unit the family Dynamics and it doesn't take much imagination to have it moving from somebody who says I'll look after your credit cards I look after your internet banking to suddenly say well mum wouldn't mind if we hooked up with the grandchildren mum wouldn't mind if she contributed to the school fees mum wouldn't mind helping us ease the mortgage pressure and in the end they say mum's going to die anyway and leave us the amount so we might as well have it now and they've gone from actually being helpful to literally Criminal behaviors so it isn't the major area of abuse but it is growing and we are ill prepared for it in Australia um and it's going to be one of the very big public policy responses how do we actually deal with this issue topped on to that is the subset which is our financial scams and older people are exceptionally vulnerable at the moment of financial scams which is a different area it's not actually Financial abuse in the traditional sense but it's playing out very significantly in the lives of older people at the moment just on that Financial abuse um and you know the way it interacts with coercive control um you remarked me when we were talking before this that aging at home is is not always safe uh can you just tell us what you mean in terms of maybe older children wanting to keep Mum Mum's asset which is the family home and she's she's there and they don't want her to sell and move somewhere else but what are you seeing so there's two types of abuse in this space the first is what's called inheritance in patients that is where you want to get the inheritance early and you start taking it effectively very simple the other one is called inheritance maintenance which is exactly what you've identified they stopped their parents from doing anything which will diminish the asset and that includes not allowing them to go into retirement villages not allowing them to go into high care and they actively stop that occurring because they fear that they'll be a a reduction in the level of inheritance so people that have reached a point of living at home where it is no longer safe or appropriate to do so and for many people it is not an option to continue to live at home it is in fact safer and better sometimes to move to high care many people just don't acknowledge that's the truth for many people but that is actually precluded from happening and so we've got uh people that are are aging in place but they're not doing so safely they're not doing so in any with any social interaction at all they're highly isolated and they're highly depressed so aging home is not about aging at home it's about aging at home safely in a way that supports you in terms of your general well-being keeps you connected to the community and most importantly allows you to receive the services you deserve and not be you know denied those Services because your children want to keep the money intact so it is a complex area end of life or you know those last few years of life is very complex in the well in the financial Arrangements that exist within families always has been but it's getting more and more I think Troublesome and as I said before we're not really on top of that issue as a as a nation at this stage so adult children um stopping mum or dad putting on a downpay Putting a down payment on um accommodation that might be more suitable and and certainly much more sociable and supported well that's all of those sorts of facilities generally mean that the asset when you leave a retirement village or even a nursing home or what have you um some of what you put in is lost and that's part of the arrangement so some people say no we're not going to do that you know we might get 75 percent in five years but no we want 100 now and so it actually has been playing out for a very long time this is not a new phenomenon but I have to say it here it's an increasing phenomenon and the costs of aged care and so on mean that some of these families are denying older people the right to a safe and connected existence and uh the Mantra about aging at home I think is absolutely right policy we all want to age at home but it has to be within the context of safety and connectedness to the society well this seems to be the perfect time to get back to you John uh de Mayo what's the evidence telling us regarding the main perpetrator groups foreign we collected the main perpetrator for each of the five elder abuse types and really what we can see is um the data really shows that the underlying dynamics of elder abuse can be a little bit different for each of the abuse types but really echoing what Colette and Robert have said as well um you know intergenerational family relationships uh do account for substantial proportion of elder abuse experiences and we can see this that um children were the most commonly reported perpetrator for financial psychological and physical abuse and um in terms of neglect they were sort of similar rates between children and spouse partner as well and um you know the Dynamics around sexual abuse are really quite different that pattern is very different where friends acquaintances and neighbors um were the main perpetrator groups and I think what it's really sort of showing as well is um you know when we think about potential measures to address Elder abusive really needs to um take in mind the the victim themselves and it's um you know they might want to report family members you know because of potential adverse consequences around social isolation and isolation from their their family so that's that's the perpetrator data in a in a high level snapshot thanks John and in what circumstances are people reporting elder abuse when when are people seeking help well we'll we'll sort of see that in the next slides um it's really consistent with other research that um help seeking is not common at all and that's certainly um mirrored in our our study overall um around one third sought helper advice and again there was some variation between the different subtypes so people who reported experiences of physical abuse were the highest proportion sought help that was 50 percent and we can see where it was neglect that was the lowest proportion of 20 had sought help um and it's probably also worth mentioning as well that where they were seeking help um we collected some further information about the types of help they were seeking and it was more informal sources such as seeking help from family and friends um both with sort of 41 of those who sought help um and sort of the more of the more formal responses uh was seeking help from a GP or nurse and that was about a third thanks John and Robert um and Colette what's standing in the way of people reporting and what powers are there uh to make a difference in cases of elder abuse well first I think Jordan's uh that analysis is terrifically helpful um and it does show that different types of abuse have different drivers and different perpetrators and that's very important so elder abuse is not over abuse there are different types and there are different drivers but if we talk about the key drivers that stop people coming forward I think they're pretty clear firstly for family members there's an uncertainty is this abuse and that's why I said earlier our whole strategy is not for you to form the view it's abuse but something's wrong something's not right and to come forward so the reporting is not you know it's getting people to come forward the second and it's a very problematic in relation to a lot of cultural communities is shame um I can't tell you what a barrier shame is shame exists in all forms of abuse uh it is very prominent in Multicultural communities and Indigenous communities so the shame that it will bring to the family to the community to the church uh is really strong now it's not you cannot say to people you should not feel shame if you feel shame you feel safe so we have to work through that how we get that so that's an area in relation to workers which is really important group it's a slightly different Dynamic one is it's about uncertainty but the second thing is about uncertainty as to how their employer how their service provider will in fact react if they raise these issues because there is the potential the family will then withdraw the older person from the service that's service they'll actually go elsewhere and so workers have to be not only given education but they have to be commissioned permission and encouraged to report so I think again just like there are different drivers of abuse uh there are different factors that mitigate against reporting but the last point a positive one is we try to find those points of connection where older people will disclose and I'll give you one example of that is discharge from hospitals when in New South Wales I'm sure it's true in every other state if you're discharging an older person there's meant to be a discharge plan and that person is not allowed to be discharged unless they are going to a safe environment now that means that at some point a social worker a senior nurse practitioner somebody is meant to have a private conversation absence of family members and we work very extensively with hospitals and Healthcare System here because it's a primary point at which an old person will disclose matters that may be indicative of abuse so we have to find the points at which the older person is likely to disclose as well as try to educate the Frontline Workforce in a way that allows them to safely report matters or raise concerns with us or other bodies so it's a complex area the good news is uh we our numbers show the Frontline workers are increasingly bringing matters forward health professionals in particular the big challenge is working with families and bigger bigger challenge is working with cold and Indigenous communities OLED so Robert and John have really summed that up really well but what I'll add in terms of the drivers of elder abuse that we haven't spoken about as much yet but which we can see in those case studies I've gone through is that one of those drivers is that relationship of dependency it might be on the one hand the older person needing to depend on their child or on the other hand the flip side the child depending on their mother or father it might not be the case that they set out to commit elder abuse like in that first case study they wanted to move in to save up some money and then oh it ended up being too convenient and the next minute elder abuse is occurring likewise with the second case study I went through um they they thought everything was fine and dandy they they thought it was mutually beneficial until that sense of entitlement came definitely not justifying the behaviors of any of the perpetrators but just acknowledging that sometimes it's opportunistic and that it wasn't necessarily something that they set out to do sure but I think that's very common in this area of abuse the mistake to make is to believe that all people that have used started off to do the wrong thing in fact the vast majority of our experience is that is not the case they start off wanting to be helpful but there is a pattern of behavior but I should make one clear thing that there is a group of people out there that are deliberately targeting older people they are deliberately finding vulnerable targets and they move from victim to victim to victim to victim and so whilst that's a tiny tiny percentage of the grip that we deal with um they are out there but what Colette said is true a huge percentage of our matters did not start off with people wanting to abuse their relatives or their neighbors but they do John can I ask you is there anything in in your data that uh could shed light on that not particularly but I was drawn to one of your previous comments about Hope um around this area and I guess I'd just like to say that you know since we did the prevalent study in 2019 one of the um really positive things is that there is so much more knowledge and awareness around our abuse now I think that's a fantastic thing and I'll give a little plug for the next seminar um my colleague Lee she'll be presenting some some of our findings around ageism and we've found that younger people themselves hold less ageist attitudes than older people so I think that's a potential sort of driver for change in the future as well wow well that's uh that's a great note to start wrapping up this webinar and I can't thank you enough John Robert and Colette uh for Illuminating uh this discussion on the five types of elder abuse so uh we do come with a very strong message of to to really be empowered here um to take on uh the subjects of this discussion today to look to Compass dot info if you are in need of help don't hesitate to lift the phone to the Elder helpline 1-800-353-374 the wonderful resources on Compass dot info and uh thank you and thank you to all our participants today for joining us and for taking part in the poll and I would ask you I invite you to as John does to in to come and join in our webinar on ageism ending ageism is the key to tackling elder abuse on Thursday the 29th of June we'll hear from Lisa Chu from the Australian Institute of family studies Marianne Geronimo from the Federation of ethnic communities Council and uh the wonderful Dr K Patterson AO the age discrimination commissioner not to be missed thank you so much thanks for joining me goodbye

Channel: Compass: Guiding action on elder abuse

Views: 24,342

Keywords:

Id: YH-c1zYdhnM

Length: 61min 3sec (3663 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 01 2023