Financial Abuse of the Elderly vs Other Forms of Elder Abuse: Assessing Their Dynamics, Risk Factors, and Society''s Response

The National Center on Elder Abuse reports that 92% of financial abuse victims are elderly women and the most vulnerable group are those over 80. Very little else is known about risk factors for financial abuse of the elderly. Thus the goal of this study is to identify factors associated with financial abuse of the elderly as opposed to other forms of abuse. The methodology would involve structured interviews with 240 abused elderly individuals, 120 of their current partners and 60 APS caseworkers who dealt with those cases. The selection of APS caseworkers will begin with a random selection of APS supervisors from 45 jurisdictions with the goal of obtaining agreement from 30 localities ' 10 rural, 10 suburban, and 10 urban. Supervisors will identify 2 caseworkers at each locale. Each APS worker in the study will be asked to obtain from their records their four most recent closed cases (in the past 18 months) in four categories- financial abuse, physical abuse, neglect, a hybrid. The data collection instruments have been designed. The questionnaires are quite detailed asking about the nature of the incident, descriptive information about the victim and perpetrator, type of help sought, and previous experience with the perpetrator.
CA/NCF