Financial abuse of elderly by their own families

Thursday, 11 September 2008 20:26

The charity 'Action on Elder Abuse' claims that thousands of elderly people are being stolen from by their own family members.

It is a "huge and terrifying” problem the charity has said, as life savings along with possessions and even homes worth tens of millions of pounds have been taken during just the last year alone.

Action on Elder Abuse has seen a dramatic rise in the number of people contacting its helpline about financial abuse and policy manager Daniel Blake, believes there is still much more that goes unreported. He also knows this to be a wide-scale problem which affects hundreds of thousands of older people, greatly impacting the quality of life of these victims.

 

Incidents can include:

• Direct theft of money or possessions
• Withholding of benefits by family members
• Families forcing elderly relatives to sell their homes
• Remortgaging homes of the elderly

Although the Government has continued to develop further strategies to help protect people with dementia and other conditions that impair cognitive functioning, charities claim that the problems still continue to grow, simply because victims don’t believe it will happen to them.

Kate Joplin of Help the Aged claims that many people are too embarrassed to admit this has happened to them or don’t even realise it has occurred due to their impaired mental state.

Charities agree that unless the issues are addressed and taken seriously, the problems will only get worse.

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