PROTECTING ELDERS FROM ABUSE AND NEGLECT
Ineffective advocacy long has undermined justice for the most vulnerable elders. Appleseed seeks to launch a new strategic advocacy effort to address that deficit and unify the fragmented emerging elder abuse field.   The Problem: Elder abuse can take many forms: physical, sexual and psychological abuse, financial exploitation, wrongful deprivation of civil rights, and neglect by unpaid and paid caregivers, both individuals and corporations. Often elders suffer more than one type of mistreatment.
Already millions of elders are victimized every year and their number is growing as the population ages and the number of caregivers declines. The problem cuts across all demographic and geographic borders and occurs in homes and facilities. The 5 million people with dementia and those over 85 (the fastest growing segment of the population) are at greatest risk. Eighty to ninety percent of cases are unreported and there’s little research to illuminate the issue or inform responses. What we do know is that even mild elder abuse is lethal, leading to a 300% increase in premature death and untold suffering, and costing individuals and public programs billions of dollars annually.
Responses: Our awareness of and response to elder abuse lags some 40 years behind child abuse and 20 years behind domestic violence, and it has remained unrecognized among human rights and social justice issues. Despite powerful bipartisan sponsors in Congress, the relatively uncontroversial Elder Justice Act has not been enacted in part because there were so few voices demanding action. While domestic violence advocates received $215 million of stimulus funding, elder justice advocates never even sought such funds.   Advocates for related issues (such as Alzheimer’s, victims’ rights, domestic violence and child abuse) raise millions for their causes and can unleash torrents of calls, emails and postcards in hours. They have powerful allies, sophisticated messages, broad grassroots and grasstops networks, and leadership that sets priorities and takes a strategic approach to communications, legislation, policy, research, legal action, direct services, planning and fund raising. No similar infrastructure or leadership exists in the elder justice field.     Many smart, thoughtful people have developed exciting new initiatives to address elder abuse. But elder justice advocacy organizations are chronically underfunded, have few or no paid staff, and are sometimes headed by volunteers with other full time jobs. They include professional membership organizations (such as the entity representing APS workers) and issue-specific groups addressing subjects such as long term care reform, domestic violence in later life, and passage of the Elder Justice Act. Aging and victim advocacy entities with real clout have not embraced the problems of the most vulnerable elders and federal, philanthropic and corporate resources for elder abuse represent only a tiny fraction of those devoted to comparable issues. These deficits have kept elder abuse in the shadows of social justice.   Next Steps: Ongoing discussions among key leaders in the field have led to the conclusion that a vital next step is formation of a new advocacy group that can provide effective strategic leadership across the field’s many issues, disciplines and organizations. Appleseed, a well-respected Washington DC nonprofit committed to social and economic justice with a national network of centers (www.appleseeds.net), is eager to incubate such a new entity and to add elder abuse to its priorities. Although Appleseed receives financial and in-kind support from various funders, including many major law firms, it lacks funding to launch or support this new initiative. We thus seek a planning grant to conduct strategic planning that will allow us to effectively launch such an group, including to (1) develop message and a communications strategy, (2) strengthen networks and alliances among the diverse stakeholders and groups, (3) guide legal advocacy projects pursued by pro bono partners, (4) create a political constituency, (5) begin rallying grassroots/grasstops support, and (6) develop an operating model grounded in vision and outcomes, and fund raising plan commensurate with those goals.   Several factors make this an ideal time for this effort. New leadership at the Administration on Aging, HHS and the Department of Justice is showing new interest in elder abuse. The original lead Elder Justice Act sponsor in the House is now White House Chief of Staff and important sections of the bill have been included in the current Senate health care reform proposal. There is increasing coverage of elder abuse in the media. And leaders in the field, mindful that the problem is growing as the world ages, have coalesced to support creation of a new entity that will provide sustained, broad-based advocacy on this complex problem. Elder justice is an important social justice issue whose time has come.