14 The Hampton Roads Messenger


Financial Elder Abuse a Growing--But


Preventable--Problem


Volume 9 Number 4 Sandy Hovey, Ethos’ director


of elder protective services, said the agency receives 160 to 200 reports of elder abuse monthly, many of which involve an elder victimized by a financial scam or taken advantage of by a family member.


Hovey did not have figures on the


percentage of abuse incidents that are financial, but he said financial abuse is often intertwined with emotional or physical abuse. For instance, a


grandson beat his 78-year-old


grandfather when he refused a demand for money.


Even after enduring hospitaliza- tion for his injuries, the older man declined to press charges against the grandson, Hovey said, illustrating how difficult it can be to intervene in exploitation by elders’ own family members.


In other disturbing BY SANDRA LARSON


WASHINGTON, D.C.--It’s a commonly seen phenomenon: An aging relative or friend becomes slower at processing bills and calculating tips, or finds it increasingly difficult to decipher a medical bill. And arithmetic errors in the checkbook register make it all the harder to balance the account at the end of the month.


This is an expected part of


aging, but such difficulties can also be warning signs of a financial competence


decline that makes


seniors more vulnerable to abuse by caregivers,


members granted control of an elder’s finances.


Most Common Form of Abuse While


the term “abuse” may


conjure up visions of physical injury or neglect, the most common form of elder abuse is financial exploitation, according to Naomi Karp, a senior policy analyst for the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office for Older Americans.


Karp and other experts spoke


on financial exploitation of seniors at the recent Gerontological Society of America’s 2014 Annual Scientific Meeting in Washington, D.C.


Elder financial exploitation is


defined as “illegal or improper use of an older adult’s funds, property or assets” by any type of perpetrator, from close a relative to a repair contractor to a telephone swindler. It is a growing but underreported crime. Karp cited


scam artists or family


recent estimates that five percent of community-dwelling


Daniel Marson, a seniors have


been victims — but that for every reported financial abuse incident, about 43 cases go unreported.


of neurology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham


School


professor of


Medicine, listed warning signs to watch for in aging adults, including increased slowness in processing bills, missing key details (for instance, a warning that payment is overdue), increased trouble with financial arithmetic, and decreased understanding of financial concepts such as medical insurance deductibles.


The ranks of older adults are


expected to swell nationwide in the coming decades as the large Boomer generation reaches their 60s and 70s. In Boston, for instance, following a decline between 1990 and 2000, the older adult population has been on the rise.


From 2000 to 2020, Boston will see a 32.1 percent increase in the number of residents 60 and older, and a 21.3 percent rise in those 65 or older, according to projections from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs. Older adults are the fastest growing population segment worldwide and locally.


With this increase, more and more relatives or caregivers may be thrust into a “financial caregiver” role. For some, this may be an easy role that draws on natural abilities or money management experience. Others will lack the skills, confidence or time to do the job well. And some will use the role to rob elders of their life savings.


Family Perpetrators In Boston, the nonprofit Ethos


in Jamaica Plain functions as the state


Elder Protective Services


agency for Greater Boston in collaboration with Central Boston Elder Services and Boston Senior Home Care.


Police Custody FROM PAGE 1


cases, not attributed to the agency involved."


"We want a comprehensive picture ... so people can be aware of what really goes on, and not the claptrap put out by people with agendas," David Klinger, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told AP.


In recent months the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown—both unarmed


African-American men


killed while in police custody—and subsequent grand jury decisions not to indict the officers responsible for their deaths, have caused intense debate and protest across the country.


"African-American communities are


tired of being over-policed, over- prosecuted, sent to prison, having men taken away from their communities, having families broken," said Inimai Chettiar of the New York University law


school's Brennan Center there is something amiss for


Justice. "I think there's much more than


communities. I think people are tired


just an instinctual sense that in


these of 'tough on crime.' "


Phillip Atiba Goff, co-founder of UCLA's Center for Policing Equity, told AP that


the issue is trending


because social media and public attention have helped the issue go viral. "Once something is trending, so that it's in the American consciousness, people become aware of it," he said. "The reason we're hearing about this is because we're hearing about it. It has its own momentum."


According to AP, Goff has been hard at work—with funding from the Department of Justice, the National Science


Foundation and private


groups—to create a policing database that would keep track of not only the number of police-involved deaths but also the number of police stops and uses of force.


"Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? What are the actual numbers?" Goff said, according to AP. "You know, when a plane crashes, it feels all of a sudden like it's not safe to fly. But if you look at the statistics, it's way safer to fly—and always has been—than to drive a car."


Read more at the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.


Tell us about your


Church programs Churches@hamptonroadsmessenger.com


examples,


Hovey told of an 88-year-old woman nearly evicted from her assisted-living residence after the daughter handling her finances pocketed her mother’s rent money, and a 78-year-old woman who received a call from a stranger who began with, “Hi, Grandma,” and said he was in trouble and needed her to mail a check right away but not to tell anyone.


This sort of tactic is seen quite often, Hovey said.


Family members given power of attorney have been known to secretly take out mortgages on elders’ paid-in-full homes, he said, leaving unsuspecting homeowners subject to foreclosure.


December 2014 Prevention Programs


For well-meaning caretakers needing guidance, CFPB has recently published a series of “Managing Someone Else’s Money” handbooks, available for free download from the CFPB website.


A wide-ranging study from


Scripps College, Claremont, Calif., on risk and protective factors on elder financial abuse, to be published in 2015, identifies depression as a risk factor and also found that declining numeracy skills and low financial literacy are more important predictors of financial vulnerability than education levels.


Researchers at Baylor Exploitation College


of Medicine described the widely adopted Elder Investment Fraud and Financial


Prevention


Program to educate physicians and attorneys to recognize when their older patients or clients may be vulnerable or victimized and refer them for help. EIFFE publishes a “Clinician’s Pocket Guide” with questions to ask patients or clients to gauge their financial capacity.


At the GSA conference, Baylor Professor Robert E. Roush stressed the urgency of recognizing financial exploitation, which he said can leave seniors impoverished, unable to pay for needed health care or even food.


“There’s something tragic about


people working all their lives and then being targeted by scammers,” he said. “Older people flat out do not have time to earn that money back.”


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