Long-Term Care and Beyond: Responding to Elder Abuse

Abstract

The Hebrew Home at Riverdale has a long history of meeting the needs of the elderly, dating to its establishment in 1917 in the Harlem area of Manhattan as a shelter for homeless and neglected Jewish elderly. Today the Hebrew Home sits on a 19-acre expanse overlooking the Hudson River in New York City and includes an 870-bed facility that provides a full continuum of residential health care, adult day and night care, home care, and housing options on a nonprofit, nonsectarian basis. Together with its Elder Serve community services division, the Hebrew Home cares for more than 3,000 older men and women throughout Manhattan, the Bronx, and Westchester County. The Hebrew Home is distinguished not only by its personal attention to care for each individual resident but also for its special ancillary programs that enhance residential and community life. The Hebrew Home houses a 4,500-piece art collection accessible to residents and the public at large. It is a full-time high school for 68 students and two full-time Board of Education teachers, as well as the home to the nation's first comprehensive shelter for victims of elder abuse. As early as 1996, the Hebrew Home recognized the need to focus multidisciplinary professional and governmental attention on elder abuse and assembled a panel of professionals to discuss this rapidly growing public health problem. In the following years the Hebrew Home partnered with the Westchester County and Bronx District Attorneys' offices to collaborate on educational seminars to help law enforcement identify and respond effectively to elder abuse. Thereafter, the Hebrew Home developed other collaborative partnerships and continued to participate in trainings on all aspects of elder abuse, including financial abuse. In 2004, through an initial partnership with the Pace Women's Justice Center and a group of the Hebrew Home management team, it was evident that the home could successfully formalize its commitment to intervening in elder abuse cases. In addition to being an effective training source, this new team had the capability, through the pre-existing comprehensive long-term care delivery system joined with legal expertise, to provide direct intervention in cases of abuse and neglect. Moreover, previous achievements in building strong collaborative relationships with other specialized nonprofit agencies and governmental colleagues had established a strong foundation on which to build a comprehensive elder abuse program. In turn, the Hebrew Home embarked upon a mission to develop a multidisciplinary intervention for elder abuse that included creating a virtual shelter within a long-term geriatric care facility, that is, The Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention, and Intervention Research (the Weinberg Center). WEINBERG SHELTER: RESPONDING TO ELDER ABUSE Victims of elder abuse reside throughout our communities. Every year an estimated 2.1 million older Americans are victims of physical, psychological, or other forms of abuse and neglect. 1 By 2011 it is projected that 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 years of age or older. 2 The segment of our population over 85 is the fastest-growing segment of the population, increasing from 4 million in 2000 to an estimated 19 million by 2050. 3 As a result of this demographic shift in the country's aging population, experts anticipate that reports of elder abuse will escalate. Reported cases are only the tip of the iceberg. For every reported case, an estimated five more go unreported. 4 Family members are more often abusers than are any other group. 5 The 2004 survey of state adult protective service agencies found when abuse reports were substantiated that the most common relationship of perpetrator to victim was adult child (32.6%) and other family member (21.5%).6 The epidemic of elder abuse is only recently receiving public attention, but despite the increasing awareness, there is still a reluctance to report the abuse. …