GAO Report Finds Elder Abuse on the Rise

A rising number of elder abuse cases threatens to overwhelm inadequately staffed adult protective service agencies in many states, according to a report released on Wednesday [3/2/11]by the federal Government Accountability Office.

At a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, Kay Brown, director of education, work force and income security at the accountability office, testified that state agencies also were seeing increasingly complex cases involving multiple types of abuse. Yet funding for state-level adult protective services agencies — which Kathleen Quinn, executive director of the National Adult Protective Services Association, described as the “boots on the ground in the fight against elder abuse” — is not keeping pace.

In the report’s survey, 25 of the 39 responding states reported that total funding for adult protective services over the past five years decreased or remained the same. As a result, staffing and training have suffered at state agencies handling elder abuse cases, she said.

“If you want to work at Starbucks, you have to go through 40 hours of training before you make your first latte,” Ms. Quinn told members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “But we will send an A.P.S. person out in some jurisdictions — because they have no money — right out of college, and hope they learn on the job.”

Ms. Quinn and other witnesses called for more federal leadership and coordinated efforts to help stem elder abuse.

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The New York Times - The New Old Age