Petition Tag - elder abuse

The Illinois State Legislature needs to pass the Financial Abuser Statute so that those who financially exploit the elderly cannot profit from their victim’s death.

The Illinois Probate Code does not do enough to protect the families of financial elder abuse victims. Financial exploitation is the most prevalent form of elder abuse. 60% of cases reported to the Illinois Department on Aging in 2011 involved financial abuse.

The most recent major study conducted found that only 90% of adults experiencing abuse experience financial abuse. Financial abuse can be as devastating to the quality of the life of an individual as physical abuse. Many elderly persons depend upon a relatively fixed income, so financial exploitation may prevent them from obtaining needed food, medicine, or utility services. The Mature Market Institute estimates that the annual loss by victims of elder financial abuse totals at least $2.6 billion nationwide.

755 ILCS 5/2-6.6 provides that those convicted of the financial exploitation, abuse, or neglect of an elderly or disabled person shall not receive any portion of their victim’s estate. However, financial abuse can be nearly impossible to prove if discovered after the victim has passed away and only 1 in 14 victims of elder abuse report their abuser. As a result, the perpetrators of financial abuse are seldom prosecuted criminally.

Simply put, 755 ILCS 5/2-6.6 is ineffective because the criminal conviction requirement puts an insurmountable burden on the families of financial abuse victims.

The Financial Abuser Statute will solve this problem by allowing a deceased victim’s family members to disqualify abusers by proving financial elder abuse by a preponderance of evidence in civil suits. The Financial Abuser Statue would ameliorate the problems of proof and reporting associated with financial elder abuse discovered after the victim has passed away. Without the Financial Abuser Statute families of financial elder abuse victims are left without recourse in the absence of a criminal conviction. Other civil remedies do not disinherit financial elder abusers, so estate distributions can be used to offset damages in successful lawsuits.

The problems of proof and reporting justify lowering the standard of proof in cases of financial exploitation. Only the Financial Abuser Statute can disinherit financial elder abusers in the manner contemplated by 755 ILCS 5/2-6.6.

A coalition of public interest groups, government agencies, and businesses have banded together in the past to prevent elder abusers from profiting from the death of their victims, and it is time for an additional push. Currently, there is legislative proposal on the Illinois General Assembly agenda to create a civil cause of action to disinherit elder abusers.

Financial elder abusers continue to profit from the death of their victims because of under-prosecution; this is the time to demand that a legislative proposal be put on the agenda that is capable of bringing justice to the families of deceased elder abuse victims. With continued support and demand for action, Illinois legislators will have no choice but to take action on behalf of Illinois’ elderly.

Financial Elder Abusers Beware: Steal From your Parents; Lose Your Inheritance.

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Abuse in any form is horrid but my focus is Emotional Elder Abuse. It’s becoming a huge problem in this country, and it needs to be stopped. It is a problem that is far reaching. It affects not only the person who is abused but entire families for years after the abused is gone.

It is much harder to detect and prove emotional abuse. Physical abuse has visual signs, emotional usually does not. Because of this fact it is almost impossible to get any help to rectify the situation.

The abuser is usually a family member or friend

Often the person who is being abused is part of the problem

The signs of emotional elder abuse are very similar to spousal abuse - alienation, helplessness, feeling of worthlessness, dependent on the abuser.

My perents both died within the last 15 months. For the last 5 years I have watched my brother emotionally abuse my parents. He was grooming them, especially my mother, for his purposes. My mother was an extreamly intelligent woman. She taught High School for over 30 years. She was a leader in the community. But in her older age she clinged to her only son who is an alcoholic, gambler and drug abuser. In her older years she was a great deal of the problem because she would not stand up for herself if it would hurt "her only son". She always refused to see the reality about him. She believed all his lies and deception.

He alienated her. He would rant and rave about many things, leaving her afraid and feeling she had to agree with him. He would lie to and deceive her and she believed every word. He would threaten to hurt himself. She worried that he might hurt himself or even her. She would not listen to her eight other children, daughters, but would defend him to the end. It was terrible to watch and frustrating beyond belief as my sisters and I tried to help her. We tried to get the State of Utah to help her, they would constantly dismiss our concerns. When they did do an in home visit, my Mother would defiantly say she was fine as my brother stood by listening to every word.

Please help me help the elderly. They deserve our help and respect. They deserve to treated with the greatest of kindness and care in the twilight of their lives. Please let’s change the laws to protect against Emotional Elderly Abuse.

Go to our website to get more information:
http://shalas5.wix.com/stopemotionalelderabuse

Or email us with your concerns and stories:
stopemotionalelderabuse@yahoo.com

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Please sign this petition and join us for the following:

World Elder Abuse
Awareness Day

June 15, 2012
South Plaza of the Legislative Building
from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

In honor of my sister, Kathryn “Kitty” Tummon.

Our goal is to make changes to the current health care system in our Personal Care Homes and to stop the abuse that happens to our Elderly population.

Unfortunately my sister is just one of many that have suffered at the negligence of others and we'd really like to see things change so other will never have to go through what she did...
[see the links below]:

CBC Radio Broadcast:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/1221254309/ID=2242135801

CBC News Broadcast:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/06/03/mb-tummon-death-flesheating-disease-lawsuit.html

CTV News
1. http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/
2. CTV NEWS VIDEO PLAYER
3. CTV's Caroline Barghout on family launching lawsuit against care home after death of woman...

After the broadcasting of these news articles regarding my sister Dr. Jon Gerrard has included our story on his blog:
http://manitobaliberals.blogspot.ca/2012/06/problems-persist-in-personal-care-homes.html

We are inviting you to sign this petition and to join us on at the Legislative Building on June 15th to assist/comment/project some views and thoughts around how we can resolve the issues as listed in this petition.

Not everyone can afford the most luxurious Personal Care Homes, and why should those that can’t be treated with such little respect and lack of dignity…

We have contacted CBC, CTV and CKND and different MLAs to come out and support us on these issues as well We hope we can count on your support

The signed petition will be forwarded to the appropriate levels of Government to assist in making these changes, we’d be interested in hearing your story...

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The Liverpool Care Pathway, (LCP), is in widespread use in the UK. It is flawed and dangerous. The Daily Telegraph has referred to it as the Death Pathway. There have been calls from victims families to have it banned. The old are particularly vulnerable because many of the so-called signs that are looked for to put a patient on the death pathway, such as frailty and declining mobility, are symptomatic of old-age in any case.

In fact, age is one of the factors also taken into consideration in putting the patient on the LCP! This petition is to call for its withdrawal. Every patient is an individual and deserves that individual consideration of their condition.

As it stands, anyone who falls into the clutches of the proponents of LCP and ticks all the boxes will be given assisted passage into the next world care of the NHS. This will apply particularly to the elderly who are, in any case, already suffering from that most terminal of all conditions - Old-Age! This will apply even contrary to the expressed wishes of patient and family, as this family has discovered.

According to Dr Peter Hargreaves, Consultant in Palliative Medicine, P. H. Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics University of London and others, in the year 2007-2008 alone, 16.5 per cent of deaths came about after terminal sedation through the, quote, disturbing blanket application of the Liverpool Care Pathway being rolled out across the NHS in the UK.

Currently, an estimated 20,000 patients have their lives taken each year while receiving care under the LCP which also prohibits administering artificial nutrition and hydration to those assessed as dying and states that doing so is ethically indefensible and, in the case of patients lacking capacity, is prohibited under the Mental Health Act.

To my comments that my mothers life was taken at Caterham Dene Hospital where LCP is in use, the NMC responded that I am, quote, at liberty to contact the police.

My mother was robbed of her life through application of the Liverpool Care Pathway. NMC registrants at Caterham Dene Hospital, even by the standards set out by that flawed measure of who is and who is not at Deaths door, were far too zealous in the liberal helpings of morphine they doled out to my mother. The PCT were actually required to set in place new practices at the Dene in regard to analgesics and their use on ward.

Following widespread application of the LCP, relatives of many hospital, nursing home and residential care patients have watched in horror as their loved ones are kept under sedation and food and fluids are withdrawn. Does the NMC therefore assert that, in like fashion, these relatives are, quote, at liberty to contact the police and that this is their advice to them? They make no reply.

The critic of the LCP mentioned above, Peter Millard Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, warns that there is a risk that elderly people with chronic conditions and disorders may be easily dismissed as dying when that may not, indeed, be the case. Certain media have even compared the LCP with euthanasia. Euthanasia is still against the law in this land. Perhaps, then, the advice of the NMC does stand in good stead and these relatives should be, quote, at liberty to contact the police. And is that their advice to them? The NMC makes no reply.

The Liverpool Care Pathway was a tool designed to be used with patients already diagnosed to be terminally ill; it was never a diagnostic tool per se to determine a terminal condition. It was designed at the Marie Curie Hospice in Liverpool specifically for the terminally diagnosed patient and to recognise when a point had been reached that death was near or imminent so as to provide as peaceful and gentle path from this world as might be provided. These patients were already diagnosed to be dying from cancer; the Pathway was not the tool used to make that diagnosis, but a means - a 'pathway' to follow - to determine that point.

A culture of death is pervading the NHS in the UK. A dark shadow is stalking our hospitals and care homes. The right to death is becoming paramount over the right to life. The LCP is providing a newfound legitimacy and cover to an unspoken policy that has, actually, been in place for decades! Will the NMC, if it will do nothing more, not add its voice to that of Dr. Peter Hargreaves and others and raise a hue and cry to get this Care Pathway rolled back and removed? Will the Care Quality Commission, the new body set in place to investigate such matters not step in?

The NMC have stated that any further correspondence will be filed, but not answered. Then, let it go on record that the NMC were asked to add their voice to denounce this scandal and declined to do so. Posterity will look back in anger and horror!

An afterword:

The Department of Health committed to investing 286 million pounds over the two years to 2011 to support implementation of this End of Life Care Strategy. That is 286 million pounds spent to assist people on their path to the next world while denying the necessary funding to keep them alive and well in this!

A Daily Mail on-line article outlines how we in the UK have the worst cancer survival rate in the western world. Doctors in our local surgeries, hospitals and health care centres are providing us with treatments based on our illness, our age, our families. The Daily Mail article explains how doctors tend to late-diagnose older patients or provide them with less beneficial treatments. The elderly are routinely denied surgery or drugs.

It is a duty incumbent upon every medical person to protect life and to do no harm. And yet, through the LCP, there is a policy set in place at Caterham Dene - and across the NHS - to make no great effort to intervene to preserve life, to let them go and even to help them on their way.

So much of the public purse to spend on death, so little to spend on life. There is something very wrong here. The elderly, suffering from the most terminal of all illnesses - OLD-AGE - are on the sharp end of this cutting-edge of end-of-life policies. A culture of death really is pervading the NHS in the UK. A dark shadow is stalking our hospitals and care homes. The right to death is becoming paramount over the right to life!

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Elder abuse pertains to any type of harm inflicted on seniors by a person who occupies a position of trust.

Abuse can be channelled through physical, psychological, sexual, systemic or financial means. Research conducted by the United Way indicates that 4% to 10% of Ontario's seniors experience some type of abuse.

Additionally, 36% of nursing home staff had witnessed the physical abuse of an older adult and 81% had witnessed some form of psychological abuse.

These staggering statistics imply the urgent need to address and remedy the poor quality of care in nursing homes. All health care providers have a professional and social responsibility to protect and foster the wellbeing of older adults in institutions. There is absolutely no justification for such appalling behaviour in nursing homes.

As per the Nursing Homes Act, nursing homes in Ontario are required by law to mandatorily report elder abuse; however there is no way to regulate the concept mandatory reporting. Therefore, to combat the issue of elder abuse, a legislation requiring all nursing homes in Ontario to publicize an annual elder abuse audit through an ombudsman position should be introduced. The legislation should require nursing homes to allocate funding for mandatory annual auditing of elder abuse.

Major changes need to occur in the nursing homes’ environment, in order to stop the repetitive and continuous nature of abusive situations. These changes can be facilitated by the elder abuse audits, as the publicity of the abuse occurring in these institutions will provide the nursing homes with an incentive to improve conditions and eliminate abuse in totality.

The succession of the legislation will also ensure that the residents of Ontario can determine which homes is the best for their loved ones.

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