Five percent of Americans in aged care facilities experience abuse & thirteen in California (Chen pg221). One of the biggest reason elder abuse continues today is under-reporting by nursing homes which is caused by victims’ inability to report due to declining cognition, physical capabilities, fear of retaliation, lack of visitors to detect abuse & a culture of silence towards abuse within facilities.
Under-staffing contributes to elder abuse, in America nursing homes are required to hire enough staff to provide 3.2 nursing hours per patient every day. The Californian Attorney General, however, reported that two out of three nursing homes inspected failed to meet this standard. This is very significant because there are approximately 17000 nursing home facilities in the United States and the expected aged population to double by 2025 (Chen p218)
Note that America does have a system in place to protect the elderly, each state has an office of the state long Term Care Ombudsman. This provides the nation with thousands of staff and volunteers who work for the ombudsmen program to provide residents and families with the long-term care, quality of life and quality of care (Chen p223)
California specifically has 35 programs run by the ombudsmen which employ people to hire, work with and train volunteers. These programs act as local ombudsmen and have the responsibility of assisting with questions and or complaints involving quality of care, fees, special diets and food, medicines and activities. In California ombudsmen have the additional task of investigating and verifying claims of abuse and neglect. This can be done because they have the right to enter nursing homes to listen and resolve complaints if deemed reasonable and necessary (Chen p223)
Despite having from what seems like a good chain to detect and control elder abuse it still exists in America at an alarming rate. It is interesting to compare America to Australia and wonder how our age care system adds up; do we spend 3.2 nursing hours with patients, does Australia’s under-staffing contribute to abuse as well and are there too many links in the chain causing a new problem?
Chen, L 2012, Eradicating Elder Abuse in California Nursing Homes, Santa Clara Law Review, Vol. 52, Issue 1 (2012), pp. 213-254
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Elder Abuse 