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By Liam Verster

ELDER ABUSE PREVENTION PROGRAMS

Provincial funding to support elder abuse prevention and intervention programs

Mar 20, 2021 | 12:22 PM

EDMONTON, AB. — The Alberta Government is providing the Alberta Elder Abuse Awareness Council (AEAAC) with $750,000 dollars to create case management programs that address elder abuse in communities throughout the province.

Chair of the AEAAC, Shantal Ottenbreit, says this money will be used to essentially expand on the previous coordinated community response (CCR) program that ran from 2014 to 2018, which allowed communities to create groups of service providers in the area that focused on elder abuse cases.

Those CCR’s mainly focused on awareness campaigns, and Ottenbreit says through this new funding, they will be able to create case management programs to have more people working on the front line.

She says the programs can vary in appearance, but the main criteria will be providing hands-on support.

“That means that they will be meeting directly with older adults that are experiencing or at risk of elder abuse to be able to go through an assessment; determine what their needs and next steps are; do safety planning with them; connect them to resources; help them to navigate through the systems that they might need, which we know can be really complex especially when you’re talking around health and access to housing and legal documents,” says Ottenbreit.

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She adds they also hope these programs will provide some standardized training in the field to look at data collection, as many organizations are under different funding umbrellas and report their data differently to one-another.

“In this way, we are the funder, so we can actually have specific targeted information that is asking for those case managers to provide back to us so that we can then look at where gaps might exist, or look at the information a little more in depth so we can understand the problem a bit more.”

Ottenbreit goes on to say they would also like to see the level of community response and resources improve through these programs to better address elder abuse in the area the groups serve.

She adds that instances of elder abuse in Alberta is quite high. A 2015 study, which involved reported instances over a 12-month period of Albertans aged 55 and older, found the prevalence rate was 8.9 per cent, but Ottenbreit warns the rate is based on reported incidents, and the actual figure is likely much higher.

“Much like any form of family violence it’s very under-reported, and especially in elder abuse because the perpetrator is most often a loved one such as a family member or a partner.

“So it makes it even more difficult for a person to come forward and express that they have become a victim of this because it’s a loved one, and often a child or a grandchild. So there’s a lot of guilt and shame over being the person who maybe has raised this parson and now they’re doing this, so we do know that it’s under-reported and we think that (8.9 per cent) figure is just a scratch on the surface.”

She adds the Alberta Government has been trying to collect data on elder abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have found instances of elder abuse have increased in some communities, while others have seen cases become more complex, which Ottenbreit says can develop for a few different reasons

“One we think is that because people aren’t connecting out in their community as often and there’s a shift in the resources to either being less accessible, because it has to be an online resource or if it’s through the phone because the offices have closed to the public walking in, then people may be finding it more difficult to access resources, therefore letting the situation escalate and become more complex before they reach out and get help.

“Or because there’s just not people coming forward because they’re isolated a bit more due to the pandemic.”

She says these figures will likely come out in the next year or two when restrictions are lifted and people can access the supports more easily.

The money will be distributed throughout the province to partner groups, which includes Seniors Outreach in Grande Prairie. The applications for the funds will open in April, and the money will be handed out to successful applicants in June.

Ottenbreit says she hopes to see the money split evenly across the province, but adds that depends on which groups apply and the amount of money needed to launch their case management programs.