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Mistreatment of the elderly became recognized as a serious and growing problem in the late 1970s, as a result of governmental investigations and research in the public and private sectors. Although in most states elder mistreatment is handled by social service agencies, other professionals are also needed to broaden the identification team and help alleviate the risk to the older adults. This book is designed for human services professionals who are not necessarily adult protective services specialists, but who provide direct ongoing services to elder adults. Its purpose is to offer guidelines for detecting elder mistreatment, so that assistance can be given to the vulnerable older adults to preserve their particular quality of life.
The book is arranged into seven chapters. The first discusses why elder-serving human services professionals should become involved in mistreatment identification, while chapter two focuses on the various starting points in the definition of elder mistreatment. Chapters three and four review research on risk factors in elder mistreatment and detail varieties of mistreatment measures and methods for distinguishing between them. A review of risk instruments used in adult protective services and non-adult protective services settings forms the basis of chapter five, and chapter six outlines a proposed risk assessment model, specially designed for elder-serving human service professionals. The final chapter offers some prospects for the future of elder mistreatment risk assessments. The work concludes with a set of four appendices, covering contact persons in lead agencies, report-receiving authorities within jurisdictions, health status risk assessment, and prevention strategies. This volume will be a useful tool for human services professionals, mental health care providers, and social health care and legal services professionals, as well as a useful addition to reference collections in public, academic, and medical libraries.
List of contents
Preface
Why Human Services Professionals Are Needed in the Mistreatment Identification Process
Definitional Starting Points in Elder Mistreatment Risk Instruments
Risk Factors and Their Theoretical Roots
Distinguishing among Mistreatment Measures
Elder Mistreatment Identification Instruments: Finding Common Ground
A Risk Assessment Model for Multidisciplinary Settings
Future Directions in Elder Mistreatment Assessment of Risk
Appendices: Lead Agencies in Adult Protective Services: Contact Persons
Report-Receiving Authorities within Jurisdictions
Health Status Risk Assessment
Prevention Strategies
Bibliography
Index
About the author
TANYA FUSCO JOHNSON teaches Sociology at the University of Hawaii, Hilo. She is the editor of Aging Well: A Selected Annotated Bibliography (Greenwood, 1995) and Elder Mistreatment: Deciding Who Is at Risk (Greenwood, 1991).
