My grandmother is 90 years old and suffers from dementia. She was fiercely independent for many years but started showing dangerous symptoms of her condition. My mother had to make a difficult decision to place her into a living facility for seniors. While she still is relatively physically sound, she continues do slide deeper into dementia. We've not seen physical signs of abuse from her care givers by means of receiving hits and/or beatings. However, we were able to catch a staff member who stole some jewelery of great personal value from her. A staff member literally took her wedding band off her finger without my grandmother even knowing it and pawned it! Once we had noticed her ring and some other items belonging to my grandmother were "missing," we reported it to the nursing home's management. We spoke with some of the other resident's family members who had also reported "missing" items and it was finally determined that there was a thief working there. Authorities were called and charges filed, etc. I believe that we were lucky to have been able catch this abuse and if it wasn't for the very frequent visits by my mother to the nursing home this abuse would have continued unchecked.
I recently saw a video news piece on a local station about a lottery-win scam that was being run out of one the Caribbean islands. It was a fraud/ripoff that had people here in Georgia as well as in several other US states. Their victims were typically (but not limited to) senior adults who were lured into believing that they were winners of a lottery but in order to receive their winnings that taxed must be paid to the lottery-host country. The reporter doing the article had the good fortune of being on-site when one of the scammers actually called their victim and was able to capture the type of bullying tactics used to get these victims. I also have seen relatively recently a 20/20 segment ("What would you do") where a senior person was being bullied and watched the various "Candid Camera" reactions to seeing such a mean thing.
All in all, Elder Abuse is a largely ignored issue in our society. What is the real scope of bulling among our nation's older population? Here's are some interesting articles about some of the ways our seniors are being taken advantage of and other forms of Elder Abuse.
Informative Link:
Types of Elder Abuse and Resources for Help:
No comments:
Post a Comment