Reports of elder abuse rise in Victoria

New data has revealed a 40 per cent increase in elder abuse victims over the age of 65 in the past five years.

Transcript

00:00 I think it's important to realise it's probably not an increase in prevalence, it's probably

00:07 due to an increase in community understanding on what constitutes family violence and a

00:12 growing awareness of the behaviours that affect older people.

00:17 Look, I think the normal ways that we think about family violence as far as physical and

00:21 psychological abuse are present in elder abuse, but what we also see is that social abuse

00:27 and neglect, which is very particular to older people.

00:30 So things like threatening to withdraw the person's access to family events unless they

00:36 sign over money from an inheritance, not allowing them to have their medication, basically treating

00:42 them poorly as far as care and respite.

00:47 What we find is that people are often not wanting to get police involved because they

00:51 don't want their family members charged, but they want the abuse to stop.

00:55 We tend to get involved when there's money missing or the neglect has gone to the crisis

00:59 response end.

01:01 I think for the first time we're actually even seeing banking institutes contact us

01:05 to say, look, we're not sure what's going on here, but we're a bit worried.

01:09 And I always say to people, if you are worried about something, there's probably good reason

01:14 why, so go and seek advice.

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