Contents

1 Introduction
2 Experiences of elder abuse
  a) Awareness of abuse
  b) Details of abusive incidents
  c) Reporting abusive incidents
  d) Recognising signs of abuse
  e) Training
3 About respondents
  a) Ethnicity
  b) Geography
  c) Base

1 Introduction

The CDNA have been raising the issue of elder abuse since 2000 yet the full scale of the problem is still unknown. This survey was sent to all CDNA members with the intention that the results will provide us with some indication of how widespread the problem is, how often community nurses encounter such incidents and how confident they are in identifying abuse.

The results have shown that 40% have witnessed or have been aware of elder abuse during 2004. However, the major outcome was that half of these respondents know of more than one patient/resident who has been abused.

The survey response indicates that incidents of abuse are more likely to take place in the patients own home - 82%. In 77% of cases referred to they are carried out by a family member of the victim.

The CDNA understands that our members are at the forefront of ensuring that incidents of abuse do not go unreported and it was encouraging to see that 94% of incidents were reported and in the majority of cases, over two thirds of the time, it was reported to more than one agency; most commonly to Social Services, GPs or the respondent’s manager.

Recognition of the problem is one way of ensuring that occurrences of elder abuse start to decrease.Whilst we are pleased that 90% of our members are confident in recognising instances of physical abuse, neglect and poor practice, it concerns us that only half of all respondents are confident in recognising financial and sexual abuse. Inevitably the training of community nurses is imperative in ensuring that abuse doesn’t go unrecognised and unreported and 88% of respondents felt that they needed more training to help in the identification of different types of abuse.

There is still a lot of work to be done in ensuring that elder abuse is taken seriously and that all patients are treated with the respect and decency that they deserve. The CDNA will continue to campaign to make this issue the priority our members tell us it should be.

2  Experiences of elder abuse

Respondents were asked a series of questions to gauge their experiences of elder abuse during the course of their work.

a) Awareness of abuse
Respondents were asked if they were aware of any patients / residents who had been abused in 2004.

This clearly shows that one in three respondents are aware of patients/residents who have been abused.

Respondents were also asked how many patients they knew had been abused.

The results are shown below.

This shows that nearly half the respondents knew more than one patient who had suffered from elder abuse. It would be interesting to know if these cases were all observed in the same care establishment.

b) Details of abusive incidents
Respondents were asked to describe the type of abusive incident they had observed during the year. The responses are as follows.

Nearly 60% of respondents had observed verbal and/or emotional forms of abuse.

The following chart shows whether the respondents had observed more than one type of abuse.

This shows that 57% of respondents had observed one type of abuse (ie physical, emotional or verbal) but that 10% had observed all three types.

The respondents were also asked to identify where the abusive incidents had taken place.

This clearly shows that the vast majority of incidents (82%) took place in the patients’ own homes.

Respondents were also asked to identify who the perpetrator of abuse was.

While it is clear that the majority of incidents observed have been perpetrated by family members (77%), there are still 50% of respondents who have observed incidents of abuse perpetrated by paid / professional carers.

c) Reporting abusive incidents
94% of the incidents observed were reported.

Respondents who did not report the incidents were asked to explain their reasons by ticking either the “unaware of who/where to report the incident” or the “unwilling to become involved” options. Over half of those who did not report the incident did not explain why (ie they did not tick these boxes).

Those who did report it reported to the following agencies/people.

As is clear, nearly two-thirds of the incidents were reported to Social Services and nearly a half of the incidents were reported to GPs and the respondent’s manager.

The following diagram shows the number of agencies/people the incidents were responded to.

Nearly two-third of respondents reported the incidents to more than one agency/person (although what is not clear is whether these were for single or multiple incidents).

73% of respondents stated that action was taken on a multi-disciplinary basis. 80% of these respondents were kept informed of the outcome.

d) Recognising signs of abuse
Respondents were asked how confident they were in recognising different types of abuse.

This clearly shows that respondents are extremely confident in recognising physical abuse, neglect and poor practice but that they are much less confident in recognising financial and sexual abuse.

e) Training
52% of respondents said they had received training in the area of abuse.

Those who had received training had received it from the following agencies.

All training provided by the police was done in conjunction with either social services or the health trust.

Despite the relatively high level of take-up of training and the high levels of confidence in recognising the differing types of abuse, 88% of respondents still felt they needed more training.

3 About respondents

It is useful to know the profile of respondents to be able to develop appropriate strategies and target future communications.

a) Ethnicity

People were asked to describe their ethnicity. These are the responses.

* Need to be aware that the relatively high number of Pakistani respondents may be due to survey design flaw.

b) Geography
 

Respondents were asked which SHA they worked in.

AD to analyse. However already clear that only @15% of respondents could actually identify their SHA. Most listed their PCT or region as the response. Would suggest that in future communications, the SHA should not be used as an identifier.

c) Base

Respondents were asked to identify whether they worked in a primary care setting; care home; residential home or other setting.

• 94.1% of respondents worked in a primary care setting.
• 1.9% of respondents worked in a care home setting
• 0.4% worked in a residential home
• 3.7% worked in another setting.

Almost 4000 CDNA members received the survey and 274 members responded, giving a response rate of 7%.

>> To go to the CDNA Website, go to www.cdna.tvu.ac.uk