It's official: 342,000 older people face abuse in the UK

The two-year Study into the extent of abuse and neglect of older people in the UK was launched at a Press Conference in London on 14 June 2007.

Funded by the Department of Health and Comic Relief, the report reveals the full extent of abuse and provides a previously unseen picture of the nature of that abuse. Ivan Lewis, the Minister for Care Services, and Gary Fitzgerald CE of the Charity Action on Elder Abuse, addressed the event.

Ely campaigner Ed Mullenger says:

The scale of elder abuse is quite staggering particularly when you realise that the research did not include people living in or being cared for in the NHS, care homes, or people with dementia.

We are seeing more older people facing abuse, often at the hands of their own families or those we pay to provide sensitive care.

This is the hidden abuse of UK society, exposed comprehensively for the first time.

The Report suggests that current adult protection systems are not reaching older people, that medication abuse continues to be a major problem, and that in many cases people are being left in bed, or unwashed, or left without food or access to the toilet. While two thirds of abusers are family members, nearly one tenth are domiciliary care staff. Twenty percent of theft is by domiciliary care staff.

Ed emphasises the abuse of older people is a blight on our society and there is a duty on all of us to face up to the challenges posed by this Report.

The four Governments of the UK must now begin to give the same level of priority to the abuse of adults as we see with children. At the end of the day, we hurt just as much at 78 years as we do at 8 years of age.

Some of the things we now need to see:

• Cross-party consensus to challenge the problem
• The Police acting on reports of elder abuse in a serious way
• Gordon Brown to make it the subject of his first No 10 summit upon becoming Prime Minister
• Adult protection legislation in keeping with child protection and for adequate funding and support for current protective systems
• A major publicity campaign to help the public understand and respond to the abuses within their midst
• Coordination between systems so that the barriers between elder abuse, domestic violence and adult protection systems are challenged and overcome
• A greater focus on domiciliary care management, funding and control
• A targeted programme to reduce the incidences of medication abuse in all settings, including domiciliary and residential

Ivan Lewis, the care services minister said:

There would soon be new guidelines for official handling of abuse cases, and that abusers of older people should be treated in a similar way to child abusers by the courts. "The findings [of the study] are disturbing. I think there are real cultural issues in our society in the way we treat older people," said Mr Lewis "What we need to aim for is a society where we are as outraged by the abuse and neglect of an older person as we are by the abuse of a child, and we are a long, long way from it."