UMaine Center on Aging Wins Grant for Elder Abuse Prevention
Contact: George Manlove at (207) 581-3756
ORONO — The University of Maine Center on Aging has received a $200,000 grant to help detect and prevent elder abuse through a unique screening program being launched in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties this summer.
The “Maine Partners for Elder Protection Project,” funded by a grant from the Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF), will start with five participating doctors’ offices and also includes an education and training component to teach people who work with the elderly to be more alert to signs of mistreatment.
Lenard Kaye, director of the Center on Aging, says the grant will go a long way toward detecting abused or neglected seniors, and also combats one of the most prevalent yet underreported crimes in the nation.
“I think we can radically improve the quality of life for many, many people,” says Kaye. “The challenge in a project like this is people have to come forward.”
Within the next few months, the center will begin soliciting information through short questionnaires for people over the age of 60 at five healthcare facilities in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties. Using “non-threatening but probing questions,” medical staffs will tactfully look for conditions under which elder abuse traditionally happens, according to Leah Ruffin, director for the Maine Partners project.
By working through physicians’ offices, Kaye and Ruffin hope to identify actual and potential abuse of seniors at early stages. With 84 percent of elder abuse never reported, according to the Center on Aging, there are many reasons why older abuse victims are reluctant to report it. Older people, however, tend to trust doctors and are likely to feel safe discussing personal issues with them.
In Maine, experts believe that as many as 14,000 incidents of abuse occur annually, and only one in 14 is reported. That means the vast majority of abuse victims are unknown to the state’s health and welfare authorities and do not benefit from the services available to address elder abuse, neglect and physical violence, according to Kaye and Ruffin.
Abuse of the elderly comes in many forms, Kaye says. Neglect is the most prevalent form of elder abuse. Financial exploitation is the fastest growing form of abuse and physical or verbal assault also is common. Most troubling is that family members and friends are most often the abusers.
“In some cases, we’re asking elders to acknowledge for the first time in their lives that someone is mistreating them,” Kaye says. Such admissions are very difficult for a population that is simultaneously independent, yet vulnerable, he adds.
“Their health is at risk. Their housing may be at risk. Their health is declining and their losing friends and family right and left. Often they’re emotionally isolated,” Kaye says. “To report someone who is subjecting them to abusive behavior is risking taking away from them one of the few people who are in their lives.”
Admitting to an embarrassing, humiliating or even dangerous home environment can seem worse for many people than seeking help.
“The primary care facility is going to be the key,” Ruffin says. “We couldn’t reach the people we want to reach without the cooperation of the physicians and their primary care practice teams.”
In addition to MeHAF, the Center on Aging is working with Eastern Agency on Aging in Bangor, Elder Abuse Institute of Maine, Maine Adult Protective Services and doctors at five facilities whose staffs will speak with elders about their living environments. The healthcare systems and facilities include Eastern Maine Health, Maine Health Alliance (St. Joseph’s), Norumbega Medical and Penobscot Community Health Center in Bangor and the Milliken Medical Center in Island Falls. The list of participating facilities is expected to grow pending the success of the first phase.
A statewide advisory board of experts in geriatrics, healthcare, elder abuse, social work and law will oversee the project. They include representatives from the state Bureau of Elder and Adult Services and Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services, Area Agencies on Aging, Spruce Run, the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office, Skelton Law Offices, LLC, Home Resources of Maine, the UMaine School of Social Work and Nursing and Sunbury Primary Care.
MeHAF is an Augusta-based non-profit healthcare foundation created in 2000 from an endowment from the sale of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maine to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. It supports developing solutions for Maine’s health care needs through grants and programs, particularly targeting projects that serve the uninsured and medically underserved.
Kaye notes that the coalition formed to oversee the unique project represents a rare merger of medical, social service, state and educational organizations “working to expand access to care for one of the state’s most vulnerable groups.”
“What makes this so unique,” he says, “is that nobody else is screening for abuse through doctors’ offices.”
In the past, many physicians have focused on a patient’s immediate health condition and potential abuse “may be something that is not on their radar screens,” Ruffin says. Physicians working with the Maine Partners for Elder Protection Project will look at the whole social aspect of medicine as well as physical health, she says.
An additional component of the project includes organizing workshops and seminars to educate health practitioners, family caregivers and others who work with the aging.
The Center on Aging can be reached for further information at (207) 581-3444. The web site for the center is at www.mainecenteronaging.org.