Laws Protecting Elder Abuse Victims
According to the National Council on Aging, in almost 60 percent of the reported elder abuse and neglect incidents, the perpetrator is a family member, and two thirds were adult children or their spouses. Like with other types of domestic violence, the fact that the perpetrator is a family reduces the likelihood of reporting by the victim. Doctors, in-home providers, and community members can
be key figures in discovering abuse if they are aware of the signs, which can help elderly, include self-neglect which can go unnoticed until the situation is extreme. Image: Hospice care of elderly. Authored by: unclelkkt. Source: https://pixabay.com/en/hospice-care-patient-elderly-old-1821429/. License: CC-0
Whereas children have many federal and state laws for their protection, the majority of laws around elder abuse are at the state level. The goal of legal protections is to create programs and policies for elder abuse prevention, reporting, and intervention as well as to create consequences for perpetrators. This section will focus on the federal laws because they apply to everyone.
The Older Americans Act (1965) is one of the first pieces of legislation to address the needs of aging Americans. It was created to fund programs that help seniors, including meals-on-wheels, transportation services, and other direct programs to help seniors live independently for as long as possible. It was reauthorized in 2016 and included definitions of elder abuse and authorized federal funding for the National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA, a collaborative program to promote and support awareness and training initiatives as well as multidisciplinary responses to elder abuse). Part of its mission is to focus on tribal interventions and awareness (American Society on Aging, 2012). Unfortunately, funding for the act has not kept pace with the demand or the cost of the programs, leading to many services and programs for seniors being limited, which can pose additional burdens on caregivers and increase the risk of elder abuse.
The Elder Justice Act of 2009 was part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It was the first piece of federal legislation to specifically address elder abuse issues. It coordinates federal elder abuse detection and prevention programs within the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services with experts in the field to create policies and programs around prevention, detection, treatment, intervention, or prosecution. The act helps better integrate technologies across providers and improve long-term care programs, including training and education of providers. It creates grants to help adult protective services (APS) at the state and local level to develop best practices for reporting and investigating elder abuse. The act also requires owners, operators, and employees of long-term care facilities to report suspected crimes and establish background checks on prospective direct patient access employees of long-term care facilities and providers. Unfortunately, while the act has many worthy goals and objectives, Congress has significantly underfunded this program, limiting its impact.
The Violence Against Women Act included elder abuse as a part of federal domestic violence crimes covered under the act. Part of the act gives funds to the Office on Violence Against Women to offer grant funding for training and services to address elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation involving victims who are 50 years of age or older.
The Elder Abuse Victims Act of 2009 authorized federal grant funding to train state and local prosecutors, courts, and law enforcement personnel to better handle elder abuse cases. It established the Elder Victims grant program to create and coordinate emergency services to victims of elder abuse. These provisions were enacted in March 2010. The Elder Abuse Victims Act of 2009 has been pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee since February 2009.
As the size of the aging population increases significantly, so will the incidence of elder abuse increase. This speaks to the importance of greater awareness of, and preventative actions for, elder abuse. Laws to protect elders, the creation of responses and best practices around the treatment of elder abuse, and improved training and reporting practices will be necessary as elder abuse increases with the rise in the elderly population.