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Centres fight modern slavery
Photo: Salvation Army Aged Care Plus
Salvation Army Aged Care Plus walkathons raise money to take action against human trafficking and raise awareness of the issue.
A series of walkathons by an Australian aged-care provider has raised more than $ 80,000 to help victims of modern slavery and spread awareness of the issue.
The walkathon events were held over six weeks at The Salvation Army Aged Care Plus centres across New South Wales, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory.
The provider revealed funds raised by Aged Care Plus centres exceeded $ 20,000. That figure was bolstered by the Cairns Aged Care Plus Centre at Chapel Hill, Queensland, which managed to bring in more than $ 5500 by itself.
The funds will be directed towards The Freedom Partnership, a Salvation Army national initiative that aims to mobilise community, business and government to realise their contributions to modern slavery and take action to eradicate it.
Figures from the Global Slavery Index, which provides a map of the estimated prevalence of modern slavery, revealed an estimated 45.8 million people are enslaved in the world today. An estimated 4300 people are living in slavery in Australia alone.
Jenny Stanger, national manager of The Freedom Partnership, said one example of the ways in which the funds will be used to support slavery victims will be through the provision of a weekly allowance, so they can focus on finding employment and begin to rebuild their lives.
Stanger said many of the people the group supports have a keen interest in caring and go on to work in the aged-care industry.
Funding raised from last year’ s walkathon was used to help a victim of trafficking relocate from overseas to Australia. The Freedom Partnership was also able to pay for emergency accommodation and food for a domestic worker who had been held against his will with his identity documents confiscated. ■
Age changes suicide risk factors
For people aged 85 and up, being widowed or bereaved, or having a circulatory or sensory disorder increases the likelihood of ending one’ s own life.
Academics are calling for a more comprehensive approach to older adult suicide prevention, following findings that there are a range of age-related risk factors associated with its prevalence.
Using the Queensland Suicide Register, researchers from Griffith University’ s
Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention( AISRAP) looked at trends in suicides of older adults from 2000 – 12 and examined subgroups with age ranges of 65 – 74, 75 – 84 and 85 and over.
They found that although the rates are not increasing, they remain consistently high, especially for men.
While the suicide figures for women remained static across the three age subgroups at about five suicides per 100,000 people, the prevalence of suicide for men became more frequent in older groups.
For the youngest group, there were an average of 20 male suicides per 100,000 people; for the second subgroup, 27 male suicides per 100,000; and in the third subgroup, 41 male suicides per 100,000.
Dr Kairi Kolves and her team concluded that suicide risks among older adults are not all the same and added there might be different risk factors depending on the stage of older adulthood, because life events change as people age.
“ For example, we found that being widowed, being bereaved or having a circulatory or sensory disorder were more common in people aged over 85 who died by suicide,” Kolves said.“ Whereas, having a psychiatric disorder or untreated mental health problems were not such prominent factors for suicide in this age group, when compared with the younger groups.”
Kolves said strategies should not be limited to the care of psychiatric conditions, and added:“ In particular, between the sexes, it would seem that the existing health strategies appear to work better for older women, as older men are still seemingly reluctant to talk about the issues.” ■
6 agedcareinsite. com. au