PRESERVING A LIFE OF PEACE AND DIGNITY FOR THE AGING

This ground-breaking volume offers a new, collaborative approach geared to enhance case review, improve victim safety, raise abuser accountability, and promote system change.

Sharing the common goal of promoting elder victim safety, experts in adult protective services, law enforcement, prosecution, health care, advocacy, and civil justice have formed a unique, multidisciplinary team approach to tackle the following critical topics:

• Establishing a collaborative description of elder abuse history
• Identifying the criteria for the reporting of cases
• Accessing the intervention systems involved
• Highlighting benefits and obstacles to success
• Reviewing policy, legislation, research, and social change

As the aging population continues to grow, so does the potential for increasing cases of elder abuse. Replete with case examples that allow the experiences of victims to speak for themselves, this book provides the framework to begin, and to build on, collaborative approaches at the local, state, and national levels toward ending elder abuse.

Bonnie Brandl, MSW, is the project coordinator for the National Clearinghouse on Abuse in Later Life, a project of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Ms. Brandel has worked with battered women and their children for more than 17 years and worked with the Wisconsin Coalition for 14 years.

Preface
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Section One: Understanding Elder Abuse
1. Historical Context
2. Defining Elder Abuse
3. Dynamics of Elder Abuse

Section Two: Responding to Elder Abuse
4. Identification and Reporting
5. Systemic Responses to Elder Abuse

Section Three: Collaboration
6. Collaborative Efforts: Benefits and Obstacles
7. Effective Interventions and Informal Collaborations
8. Team Processes

Section Four: Accomplishing the Work
9. The Work of a Case Management Team
10. Enhancing Victim Safety Through Collaboration
11. A Collaborative Model for Holding Abusers Accountable
12. Systemic Review and Change Through Multidisciplinary Collaborations

Section Five: Where Do We Go From Here?
13. Strategies to End Elder Abuse

Appendix A: Timeline of Significant Events in tihe Elder Abuse Field
14. References
15. Index