Reports of suspected abuse of older people sees steep increase

In the last year there has been a 28.4 per cent increase in alerts made to councils about abuse to older people, fuelling worries about abuse in the UK.
The newest set of data from the government run Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) emphasise the need for greater accountability for those providing care in the UK.

In 2012-13 local authorities received 173,000 alerts relating to the abuse of adults and took 112,000 of these forward as adult safeguarding referrals. Some 60 per cent of these concerned people aged 65 and over and, of these, more than 26 per cent related to people aged 85 and over. Around a quarter of referrals relating to people aged 65 and over concerned suspicions of physical abuse and over a third cases of neglect. In addition, just over 18 per cent of cases were of financial abuse, a form of abuse that is often overlooked.

Worryingly, in over a third of completed referrals relating to people aged 65 and over no further action was taken against the alleged perpetrator and in a further 6 per cent of completed referrals the outcome was ‘unknown’.

Charity Age UK is asking for the Care Bill (which is in the committee stage of its parliamentary journey) to go further in holding those providing care responsible for neglect or abuse. Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK says: “The Care Bill presents the ideal opportunity to ensure that vulnerable adults living in our community are given the best possible protection from neglect and abuse. We welcome the advances that the bill already makes in safeguarding older and disabled people but with some additional changes, that protection could be so much more effective.

“We want to see stronger powers to investigate suspected abuse where a third person is denying access to the person, a new offence of neglect of a vulnerable person who has mental capacity, and an offence of corporate neglect so that directors of care providers can be held to account for neglect.”

Commenting on the number of reports of suspected abuse in the HSCIC research, she adds: “These numbers are disturbing: even though growing awareness of the abuse of older people is likely to have contributed to the increase in the number of safeguarding concerns reported to and taken forward by English councils. They concern some of the most vulnerable people in our society, many of whom feel that they have no one to turn to for help.

“Any abuse of older people is unacceptable and we need a zero tolerance approach to any abuse whether through neglect, financial manipulation or physical or mental cruelty. Our biggest fear is that there are still many cases that are not reported and we would encourage anyone who suspects that an older person is being abused to contact their social services department or the police straight away.”