Abuse And Neglect Of Older Adults example essay topic

The most common definition of elder abuse is as follows: elder abuse is any harm done to an older person that is violent or abusive. Elder abuse is often a crime. The abuse can be caused by a family member, a friend, staff in a group residential setting such as rest and retirement home, and in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes, homes for the aged, public or chronic care hospitals, or anyone the older person relies on for basic needs. Abuse often involves intent; neglect related to lack of knowledge of available resources, exploitation was based on greed and desire to control. Elaine Scott of the family violence prevention division of health and welfare Canada noted that; "There is no universal agreement on what constitutes elder abuse and the absence of a uniformed definition has hindered research in the area. The term elder abuse is generally interpreted to mean harm caused to an adult who is vulnerable primarily due to age.

The abuse is not limited to physical harm but also includes psychological abuse, financial or material exploitation and neglect of health and personal needs" (Elaine Scott, Health and Welfare Canada, presentation to the sub-committees February 2nd, 1993, p. 1-2). Elder abuse can also be as an act. It can be committed or omitted by another person that results in harm to or jeopardize the well-being or safety of an older person. The four major categories of abuse that are most common are physical, psychological, material or financial and neglect. Physical abuse includes the willful, direct infliction of physical pain or injury, rough handling, shoving, slapping, pinching, hitting, kicking, restriction of freedom or movement, and sexual abuse. Psychological abuse refers to socially isolating, threatening, yelling at, or withholding affection or denying privileges to a person.

Financial or material exploitation involves the theft or conversion of money or objects of value belonging to the senior by a relative or caregiver. Neglect involves failing to provide the necessities of life, including adequate heat, clothing, hygienic conditions and the denial of social interactions. The majority of abusers are family members. They include spouses, adult children, grandchildren, siblings and other relatives.

The abused are predominately female. The elderly population has more women than male. Sadly, in many cases elder abuse is spousal grown old. Older Canadians are seen as the number one priority to target for education, in ways in dealing with the abuser and not just the abused. We have resources for the abused where they can come for help and get out of the situation they are in. Many times the abusers do not see what they are doing is a problem.

If the abuser is a family member, they usually see what they are doing as taking care of the elder person because they cannot take care of themselves. Therefore, they control their lives and isolate the elder from anything social. They see themselves as knowing what is best for the elder person. They will also see the elders as a nuisance and pay less attention to their needs because they have other problems, an example is a family member who is the abuser is stressed at home with kids or has financial problems and their forced to look after their parents. Even caregivers cannot always see things their doing as a form of abuse.

A simple act of opening an elder persons mail without consent is a form of abuse, or pressuring him or her to sign a cheque or legal document, asking for money at every turn, neglecting physical needs, not maintaining their surroundings or even over medicating because the caregiver feels they are not getting enough. There are many social prejudices about older adults. They are often considered a social burden because they do not participate actively in economic production. This view neglects their psychosocial contribution to the community. While life expectancy has increased considerably, advancing age is accompanied by decreasing physical and intellectual power. Medical progress has extended the life span, but the final years are not always lived in good health.

The Demographic forecasts points to the coming increases in the number of people over seventy-five. That is the age after which both physical and cognitive chronic diseases become more common (Potter and Perry, 1989; Neault and Poirier, 1991). Advancing age is often accompanied by the loss of spouse and friends, the erosion of social bonds, reduced income, loss of interest on the part of the children absorbed with their own busy lives and so forth (Neault and Poirier, 1991). Much information is needed to raise awareness and foster commitment, openness to others and sense of community. The lack of information and misinformation leads to withdrawal, overprotection and isolation.

Older adults are often seen as unable, or too frail, to be given information to make choices. An example of this is why are residents of institutions not consulted about arranging the furnishing in their rooms, or not told about events such as the divorce of their children? Yet, it is clear that the free flow of uncensored information has beneficial effects on the emotional health of older adults, and good psychological health helps guard against abuse and neglect (Gaul, 1990). Knowledge is empowering so we also need to educate our youth in the schools and adults in the community.

Society prizes youth, beauty and vigor; society values people less as they age. Mandatory retirement at a fixed age supports the belief that older adults are no longer useful to society. Society overlooks the wealth and verity of the historical, society and economic experiences possessed by older adults and value this represents (Bara be-Langlois, 1994). Knowledge about aging process and an awareness of abuse and neglect of older adults are not only educational but also helpful in detecting signs of violence and abuse. If we educate our youth in the aging process it will help the youth understand how useful elder people are and how they contribute to society and help them understand how we all get old and we need to take care of our elder now. As relatives, they should be educated or brought to an understanding of how to involve the elders in everyday activities.

With stereotypes like old folk need to be taken care of, or old people are like children, society forgets about how elders contribute to society. Many times abuse happens because people just do not understand or do not care. Unfortunately, abuse will keep going on among elder adults because many older adults are silent about abuse and neglect due to a number of factors. The main reasons are ignorance or mistreatment and fear such as reprisals, no longer seeing one's children or being expelled from the institution or home. Older adults are not very aware of mistreatment issues. Creating support systems and bonds among older adults increases confidence and raises the level of reporting.

Another factor to why elders keep silent about abuse is they often have a feeling of shame, embarrassment or intense family loyalty. They can also have a fear of the abuser and / or of being sent to an institution, low self-esteem and of assertiveness, a lack of awareness of agencies that can assist them, a lack of financial resources if they are dependent on the abuser, a physical or mental disability that makes reporting difficult or impossible. Many older adults fail to demand their rights or assert themselves. Often, they have learned to obey and to submit to various authorities. Sometimes this appears to be partly due to their religious upbringing.

These characteristics must be taken into account to build trust between the intervener and the older (Lalonde, 1990). It must also be taken in mind that older adults of today do not necessarily have the same characteristics as "baby boomers" that have been fighting for change all their lives, the older adults of tomorrow. Many adults today, when being abused, feel like they deserve the abuse and therefore do not report it. They often fear that if there family is taken from them or they report their caregivers they will have no body to take care of them because there to old. Since the majority of abuse is from family members, the elders often do not feel like they have the right to say their being abused because they feel lucky that their children or relatives are helping them out. The Kerby center, a seniors's ervice center in Calgary, collected information on 130 clients who were abused by family members (Boy ack, Mckenzie and Hansel l, 1995).

The majority of abused older adults identified by service agencies were in their 60's and 70's. The Alberta study reported the following age breakdown: While the median age of clients was 72.3 years, a significant percent (nearly 18%) were over the age of 80. The majority of victims were women (14% male, 86% female in the Alberta study). Over half (53%) of family homicide's against older women and one quarter (25%) of those against older men were committed by spouses (including ex-spouses) (statistics Canada, 1999 a).

Older adults were more often abused by spouses and children than paid volunteer caregivers were. Four in ten (42%) were spouses and 32% were children (for a total of 74% in Alberta). To understand the place older adults have in a particular society, it is important to consider changes in the society's demographic profile, the social environment itself and public policy governing their lives. In 1991, there were approximately 3.2 million persons over 65 years of age in Canada. By the year 2031, there will be 7.5 million according to current forecasts. The proportion of older adults in Canada's population is expected to increase from 11% to 23% (Gouvernement du Canada, 1993 b).

Male abuse is not widely reported for many reasons, one being that males feel that if they report the abuse they will be criticized for not being man enough to deal with it and also that women are the majority of the abused. It is hard to imagine a man who is physically larger than a woman could be abused. Cultural norms and beliefs hold that women are much less violent than men are. In addition, a man is usually assumed able to hold his own among members of his own sex. Most males are abused between the ages of 60 to 80 years old. Most men are abused by more than one person and most of the time it was a family member and at different points of their lives.

Another common type of abuse experienced by men is financial issues and some attention must be paid to their vulnerability. A key issue was that most men were easy targets for abusers. In guidance "No Secrets" produced by the Department of Health (2000 a) the definition of vulnerable adults is taken from the consultation paper "who decides?" issued by the Lord Chancellor's Department (1997): ... may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness; and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation (Department of Health 2000 a, p. 9). Most elder men are extremely lonely, so they welcome company or help from people outside. Subsequently caregivers are able to take advantage of situations. Most men when abused will not take legal action because they wanted to protect the abuser, because sometimes the abuser was their son or daughter or even the abuser has children and the abused does not want anything to happen to the abusers children if they press charges.

It is very important when dealing with elder men and abused issues to understand that these males come from a generation where males and females were seen to have specific roles. The man was seen as the 'breadwinner', 'head of the household', stemming from this attitude, it is important to male victims of elder abuse to take control from the abuser and to sort out very practical matters for themselves. A critical finding in elder male abuse has been that male victims are often not offered the time, resources, and sensitivity that they require, because a holistic approach has been adopted (Pritchard, 2001, p. 95). Professor Robert Pinker (1978) defined social service clients as a person who receives what the social services call help and who lives with the consequences of that help.

Most elder abused men are living in an environment where they are being helped and abused by it, so the question is how can we determine if they are being helped or abused? Now how should the government help with this problem of elder abuse? Elaine Scott from Health and Welfare Canada (1993) gave her opinion on this. The federal government in consultation with other levels of government, continue to provide funding support for existing services for the elderly and that such services be adopted to address abuse of the elderly. That the federal government provides research money to establish pilot projects on community based alternatives to institutional care for the elderly. That the federal government in consultation with other levels of government, provide appropriate levels of funding for respite care, daycare and other services supportive of informal caregivers of the elderly.

A number of U. S states and Canadian provinces have passed adult protection legislation; Quebec is one of the Canadian provinces without such a law. Pressured groups in Quebec are opposed to this legislation because its nature would suggest that older adults are no longer independent, responsible adults capable of making decisions about their own lives (Beaulieu, 1992 c). In Canada, health and social service legislation is under provincial jurisdiction, and there are significant differences. In Quebec, the quality of social services and health care in institutions is investigated only when a formal complaint has been logged. In addition, "Canada's criminal code and professional codes stipulate rules of individual conduct.

These do not cover the full range of interpersonal relations and management practices in institutional settings" (Beaulieu, 1992 c, p. 164). It is therefore, up to each institution to assess abusive or neglectful situations and take appropriate action. The truth of the matter is that there just has not been enough done to avoid elder abuse, there are around 25 organizations in Alberta that are devoted to helping elders, there are some lucky places in Canada that are very devoted to helping elders, Ontario alone has 92 services. Not enough is being done that involves the government. I feel that elder abuse and taking care of our elders should be made more of an issue because of one simple fact; almost all of us grow old. Our society spends a large amount of time dealing with the younger generation so that they can grow and have a happy peaceful life, but what about the ones that are already old should they be forgotten?

The males who fought for our country and the females who gave birth to them and changed life for females of the next generations, do we forget so soon how everything came about? Social workers have to take into consideration that elders come from different generations and in order to deal with each case there has to be a lot of patience and understanding on the social workers part. Most elder adults do not have the information on elder abuse to step forward and confess their problem. Working individually with elder adults I would enjoy more because you can build a friendship and take your time. In a group situation, I feel that many elder adults would not be able to confess their problems and you cannot spend as much time on each person. Most of us want to fix things in as short a time as possible so it is quite hard to work with the elders so we forget and focus on our youth.

The world needs to be made more aware of elder abuse and other elder problems so we can improve on them. We just need to make everyone understand and take care of the future us. Reference Listings Aitken, L. (1996), Griffin, G. (1996). Gender Issue in Elder Abuse. London: SAGE.

Beaulieu, M. (1992 a). La formation en milieu de travail: l'expression d'un besoin des cadres en ce qui concerns les abus a I'endroit des perso ones agees en center d'accueil, Le Gerontophile, Vol 14. No. 3, pp. 3-7. Beaulieu, M. (1992 b). Aider ses parents viellissants. Un defi: personnel, familial, politique, communautaire, pp. 211-224.

Montmagny: Marquis. Beaulieu, M. (1992 c). Les abus en institution: reflexion sur les soins dispenses aux a ines, Revue internationale d'action communautaire, Vol. 28, No. 68, pp. 163-170. Chappell, R. (2001). Social Welfare in Canadian Society. Toronto, ON: Nelson Gaul, L. (1990).

Les personnes agees victims de violence: un modele social ement Entretenu, in Car ette, J and Plamondon, L, Viel lir sans violence, pp. 224-228. Montreal: Presses de L'Universite du Quebec. Gouvernement du Canada. (1993 b).

Community Awareness and Response: Abuse and Neglect of Older Adults. Ottawa. Health Canada, (2002). Abuse and Neglect of Older Adults. Government services Canada.

La lande, S. (1990). La solitude et la peur favoris ent les abus, L'accueil, first quarter, pp. 10-11 McKenzie, P. (1992). Guide to Legal Issues in Elder Abuse Intervention. North Vancouver, B.C. Potter, P.A. and Perry A.G. (1989). Soins infirmiers: Theorie et Pratique. Elder Abuse.