With Seniors’ month coming to a close Karen Willy, executive director of the Seniors’ Society emphasized the importance of talking about a critical issue which is often overlooked or unseen for different reasons.
It’s one that older adults face higher risks of and few resources with which to respond especially as they age.
“Abuse, whether it’s abuse of a spouse or an Elder, abuse is quite often silent,” cautions Willy.
“It’s one of the things that we have to do, is break that silence and start talking about it,” says Willy.
One way to do that is to equip communities with the tools they need to start that “conversation,” by educating and raising awareness, she adds.
Willy is currently running workshops and training across communities of the North, to help them deliver Elder abuse awareness. The initiative began out of collaborative efforts between the NWT Senior Society and the NWT Network for the Prevention of Abuse of Older Adults.
Willy explained that for the first workshop she chaired, which took place about three years ago, people kept telling her that the definitions of abuse “don’t work” for Elders in the North.
“The definitions were, of course, government definitions. And so then I started to go out to the communities and deliver the Elder abuse awareness presentations and I would hear the same thing. We want people from our community to do this. The definitions don’t work,” she said.
That’s when Willy along with others from the Senior Society began organizing new workshops which led to a book that was published last week, titled About Elder Abuse: the Words of Our Elders.
“This publication is a result of three workshops where 26 Indigenous Elders from four regions in the N.W.T. participated in rewriting definitions of Elder Abuse in words that made sense to them. Elders provided the definitions, examples and scenarios, then put the publication together honouring Elders’ words,” said Willy.
“The workshops made it possible, and having them put it in their words and that’s what the book is,” she explained.
The workshops brought to the surface forms of abuse that might often be taken for granted, such as cultural abuse and technological abuse.
Cultural abuse has to do with not supporting access to traditions and cultures.
As written by the Elders who are the book’s authors:
“The cultural side of elder abuse is keeping elders away from traditions and not acknowledging their culture. It may include not providing traditional foods, telling someone that their culture is not relevant, or that it’s wrong.”
With technological abuse, this could be a scenario where a family member might be spending excess amounts of time on a cell phone instead of taking time to engage with the Elder. Often times it happens without the abuser even realizing it.
Willy said that what was learned from Elders in the workshops has helped to inform the training.
“The most important thing to do is to know the signs,” she said.
Willy points out that abuse can happen across different settings, can happen anywhere from the home to anywhere in the community as well as in a long term care facility or in a hospital.
“And the second thing is to know how to talk to people who you suspect are being abused because if you ask them directly, they’re likely going to shut down unless they’re ready to share. So you ask questions like are you okay? And they have the choice then to tell you what’s going on and sometimes they don’t want to and that’s fair that’s a choice,” said Willy.
“When somebody’s abused, you take away their choice, so if you are trying to help them by taking away, their choice is not the way to do it. You might say, is there a way I can help you? You might work towards a safety plan for that person. So if they’re in a situation where they’re being abused and they call you and they have a safety word and they give you that safety word, then you have a plan of action. There are many ways to really support people in this situation. It’s just knowing where they are at,” she continued.
This is part of what the training, called Train the Trainer Elder Abuse Awareness Workshop, helps people do, deliver Elder abuse awareness, which can be a powerful tool in a climate of few other resources.
“Part of that is teaching people to recognize the signs, the symptoms but how to talk to people about abuse and then what some of the remedies might be,” she said.
Data collected by the U.N indicates that one in six Elders are abused, but as Willy points out in the North statistics on abuse don’t exist.
“We don’t know how big the problem is across Canada or across the NWT,” said Willy.
One reason for that has to do with not having enough resources to collect the data. Another issue has to do with confidentiality. If less than five people at a long term care facility have reported abuse for example, it is illegal to report because of confidentiality and protecting the person’s identity, explained Willy.
“But what we do know, because the NWT Senior Society runs the senior information line is that there is abuse in the North,” she emphasized.
For something like physical abuse or financial abuse, which is a criminal act, older adults can call the RCMP explained Willy. When it comes to other forms of abuse, there is a serious lack of resources available to older adults
“There’s very few resources available to seniors who are being abused, beyond that. There’s the Protection Against Family Violence Act. So if somebody in their home is actively abusing them and they have the lease or the deed in their name, they can apply for a protection order through the Family Violence Prevention Act,” said Willy.
Older adults may choose to leave their home but there may not be many places for them to turn.
“Elderly women who are in an abusive situation in their home, can go to a family violence shelter but there’s no other real remedies at this point and that’s something that we need to consider as a society,” Willy pointed out.
Older adults can face a lot of fear in reporting abuse for different reasons, including fear of losing the family members (for example, if that family member is the abuser) that they may rely on and have deep emotional attachments to.
“One of the things that we have to do is break that silence and start talking about it,” she said
One way to do that is by making sure communities across N.W.T. have people who are trained to deliver Elder abuse awareness “to start the conversations,” explained Willy.
So far the program has trained 15 people across the N.W.T. to deliver Elder abuse awareness workshops in their communities.
“The Seniors’ Society has always been the first people who go out, but we don’t know the culture of every community and every community is different. So if we train people from the communities, they know their communities. They know their people and they’re able to do Elder abuse awareness, workshops that meet the needs of the people.”
