industry & policy
A voice for others
Dealing with elder abuse as an aged care worker.
Pat Joyce interviewed by Megan Tran
Tackling the taboo of elder abuse is often a difficult conversation to have, but how do staff navigate these issues?
Pat Joyce, advocacy manager at Seniors Rights Service, recently spoke at an Aged Care Insight seminar about addressing elder abuse policies and confidentiality. She talked with ACI afterwards to further unpack these issues.
ACI: How difficult is it to discuss the topic of elder abuse? PJ: It’ s a very difficult topic. Everyone’ s afraid to speak about it. It’ s underreported. So we’ re here to listen to any concerns and help the aged care providers work with their clients and their customers to get the protection they need in residential care, as well as in their own homes – people receiving home care services; often it’ s home care staff who recognise and identify the abuse of older people. A lot of people don’ t recognise it as abuse at all. That’ s not what they call it.
So it’ s up to the professionals to name it and put some things in place to protect the older people and reassure them that there are things they can do to stop the abuse – which is mostly financial, but also psychological, bullying and pressure from family members to make choices. The older person should have autonomy around their own life and be in charge of their own lives.
So, yes, it’ s very difficult to raise that topic, but we can definitely help be part of the conversation.
What constitutes elder abuse? It’ s any breach of trust in a trusting relationship – so, families, or if there is a duty of care, providers or service providers, where there’ s a community of care.
The United Nations said elder abuse is a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there’ s an expectation of trust, and which causes harm or distress to an older person. So that includes physical, psychological, emotional, sexual and financial. Financial is a big one, and it can be the result of intentional or unintentional neglect. Those are the stories that we do hear about and makes the media and upsets the community, because everyone expects older people will be respected and supported to have a safe and happy life.
What is the role of aged care workers when it comes to reporting elder abuse? All aged care workers will have policies to support them, and they should have a management structure, and management should know where to go to get support from them. There are peak bodies the management can approach for help and to devise policies.
There’ s mandatory reporting for abuse and that should be followed. So we could make sure that these things are in place, make sure that staff get the training and have discussions about this, so they know who to go to and how to report and how to document any incidents or any suspicions that they have, and get some advice.
People can call us, care workers or management. We can start the conversation and refer them to a community legal centre or somewhere else to get that information.
The Elder Abuse Helpline and Resource Unit in NSW is key in these matters and will provide support, referrals and information about elder abuse and how to respond. Also, the NSW government has just released its updated booklet [ Preventing and Responding to Abuse of Older People( Elder Abuse)].
So all these resources are available, and we talk about these when we’ re invited to give talks about people in aged care or home care, and what the responsibilities of staff are.
What are some of the challenges for staff when advocating for clients? The challenges are complex family dynamics. There might be two or three families involved. Adult children who don’ t always agree.
With dementia, sometimes this causes conflict in the family. If someone with dementia is telling other family members that someone’ s stealing money from them, it may or may not be true, but this breaks families as well. So trying to understand the disease of cognitive decline.
There’ s abuse we see when sometimes carers are stressed, because they don’ t have enough relief and enough support, so we work with other organisations like Carers NSW to make sure there’ s access to counselling and support for carers.
There are also respite opportunities, either in the home or at a residential care facility or another service that can provide respite, so the carer can continue to do their valuable work.
How important is it to give a voice for those who can’ t speak? It’ s very important. A lot of people call us who are in their 90s who have no support, no family, not many friends, or no friends, or maybe just a neighbour. They are very vulnerable, so it’ s important for organisations such as ours, independent advocacy services, to stand beside people and give them a voice. So that’ s very important.
We can also inform the government and other community groups about issues affecting older people, including abuse and being part of the conversation. ■
14 agedcareinsite. com. au