State Senator Finds 30,000 Elder Abuse Incidents

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Related articles: United States > New York City

NEW YORK—Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx/Westchester) unveiled more than 30,000 estimated incidents of elderly abuse statewide in 2008 on Monday. He released the results of his latest report at the Hebrew Home, a nursing home in Riverdale, New York.

There were 19,301 reports, the figure reflects number of abuse incidents and not the number of individuals affected. Claims of elderly abuse were made to the New York State Office of Children and Family Services’s (OCFS) and Adult Protective Services (APS) in 2008. Nearly 5,000 of those come from New York City.

After applying the national rates of substantiation of 35.5 percent and underreporting, Klein’s office reported that 34,000 cases took place in New York in 2008. These calculations relied exclusively on APS data to avoid counting duplicated cases.

“This report makes clear that our seniors are at risk and need our help. For too long there has been no coherent system for measuring the frequency of elderly abuse. My bill would change that and make one agency responsible and accountable for this critical information,” said Sen. Klein in a press release. “With so many baby boomers nearing retirement, we need to accurately identify the scope of this issue now, so we can develop more effective prevention, protection and treatment.”

Elderly abuse is a broad term, which can include acts such as beating a senior, failing to feed or provide medication to a senior, intimidation through gestures or speech, deceiving a senior into signing documents that transfer wealth to the caregiver.

Sen. Klein’s office also surveyed a variety of state and municipal agencies that investigate elder abuses, including the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and the Office of the Aging.

Yet because the discrepancy of definition of different types of elderly abuse, the age at which a person becomes a senior and the ways of tracking down abuses between different agencies, a more uniform and comprehensive report could not be made.

Sen. Klein proposes a bill that would develop a coordinated approach to more accurately measure this serious and growing problem and help with prevention.