For the past 10 years my elder law practice has brought me into contact with numerous social workers who care for elderly clients. I have marveled at their patience, understanding, and forbearance in very difficult and trying circumstances. I do not believe the public at large knows or understands the scope of these efforts. In this brief article, I would like to promote and foster the understanding of the work of social workers and in particular their work with the elderly population. The most difficult part of dealing with elderly people who are incapacitated to some degree is to convince them that they need assistance and to get their willing consent to accept assistance. I may seem easy for us to diagnose a situation and propose quick, sensible remedies. However, in many cases this cannot be done because the elderly person is hesitant, fearful, set in his or her ways, obstinate, or confused or possesses a combination of these traits. About this time frustration builds and friends and neighbors depart the scene or fear to enter it. With luck, a stalwart social worker arrives on the scene, although frequently not at the request of the elderly person involved. The best way to understand and appreciate the work of these social workers is to describe some actual occurrences. The descriptions are general to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. One occurrence involved a social worker working for more than two years with a client who refused help, refused to see a doctor, deliberately withheld or provided incorrect information about her affairs and her family and who devolved into a state of deplorable living conditions. After more than two years, of the client became ill and allowed the social worker to summon a doctor who diagnosed Parkinson's disease, prescribed proper medication and, as a result, this client is now a competent person running her own life and managing her affairs after approximately 10 years of neglecting her affairs. Another example involves the work of a social worker in discovering and blowing the whistle on the fraud against and deception of an elderly person in her 90s. The perpetrator of the fraud had removed the elderly person from her home and placed her in a nursing home after obtaining her power of attorney. Upon discovering that the client was no longer in her residence and discovering that the client was in a nursing home in a nearby state, the social worker visited the client in the nursing home. She could have just as easily relied on the fact that the client was no longer in her jurisdiction and done nothing. The social worker discovered what appeared to her to be fraud and convinced the client to engage an attorney who in turn, with the assistance and cooperation of other authorities, recouped the majority of the misappropriated funds and caused the imprisonment of the perpetrator as well as obtaining a civil judgment against him for the remainder of the misappropriated funds. But for the efforts of this social worker, these results could not have been accomplished. Another instance involved a client who appeared to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease and various forms of paranoia. After working with the client over an extended period of time, the social worker convinced the client that she needed the assistance of an attorney. As a result, it was discovered that the client was being defrauded (with her cooperation) by a former policeman. This policeman had been allowed to resign from the police force several years earlier after being brought up on charges of defrauding the client of between $60,000 and $90,000 by providing spurious off-duty security services. …