Barriers to Disclosing Elder Abuse and Taking Action in Australia
- PDF / 275,420 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 35 Downloads / 241 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Barriers to Disclosing Elder Abuse and Taking Action in Australia Briony Dow 1,2 & Luke Gahan 1,3 & Ellen Gaffy 1,4 & Melanie Joosten 5 & Freda Vrantsidis 1 & Meaghan Jarred 6
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Elder abuse often goes unreported. Perpetrators of elder abuse are frequently the adult children of the victim and this relationship may contribute to the reluctance of older adults to seek help. This study aimed to understand older people’s experiences of elder abuse and the barriers to reporting it. Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with clients of Seniors Rights Victoria (SRV) who had a case opened and closed between 2012 and 2015, or had made two or more calls to SRV between this period. Thematic analysis was undertaken of the qualitative data. Older people who are being abused by their adult children may be reticent to seek help due to fear of adverse consequences for their adult child. The parental bond frequently prevented participants from speaking to others, asking for help, or enacting the advice provided to them. Shame and stigma surrounding the reporting of elder abuse committed by adult children needs to be addressed. Older people need to be supported to take action earlier when there is less likelihood of adverse consequences. Policy and services need to recognize the unique characteristics of the parent-child relationship and the way they can affect an older person’s ability to seek help. Keywords Elder abuse . Family violence . Barriers . Reporting . Australia
Introduction and Background Definition and Prevalence of Elder Abuse The World Health Organization (2015, p. 227) defines elder abuse as “a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust that causes harm or distress to an older person”. The prevalence of elder abuse ranges from 2.2% to 14%,
* Briony Dow [email protected]
depending on the setting, definition, and sample (Pillemer et al. 2016). In Australia, the number of older people affected by elder abuse is difficult to determine as there has been no national population based prevalence study to date (Dow et al. 2018b). A recent review of Australian literature estimated that between 2% and 10% of older Australians may have experienced elder abuse (Kaspiew et al. 2016). However, the actual prevalence is likely to be much higher as many cases of elder abuse go unrecognized and unreported.
1
National Ageing Research Institute, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
2
School of Global and Population Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
3
School of Social Sciences and Humanities, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
4
School of Nursing and Midwifery, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
5
Seniors Rights Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
6
School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Luke Gahan [email protected] Ellen Gaffy [email protected] Melanie Joos
Data Loading...
