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Too Few Funds For Protection
By Tom Mashberg, Boston Herald
August 2, 2004
While reports of elder abuse have soared by 16 percent since 2000, state funding to combat the problem has shriveled by 5 percent to 10 percent a year over the same period.
Officials and legislators say the falloff is due to budget woes afflicting Massachusetts. But experts in elder abuse say the problem is growing too fast to justify the cuts.
''It is very strange that in the last few years the Legislature has not spent more,'' said Al Norman, executive director of Massachusetts Home Care, the umbrella group for the 24 elder protection agencies around the state. Those agencies serve as frontline responders to reports of abuse and neglect.
''This is a key area of vulnerability that they have been slow to respond to,'' Norman said.
Norman and other elder protection experts say the lack of money forces them to ''triage'' reports as they come in - with the risk of missing instances where an elder's safety is threatened. He said 324 cases were not probed last year due to ``staffing capacity issues.''
''It's always a fear that a bad situation could be missed,'' he said.
According to the state, reports of elder abuse - physical, financial and emotional - rose from 1,529 in 1983-1984 to 6,972 in 2003-2004, or 355 percent. Specialists say for every case that is reported, four or five go unreported.
But the money made available to hire the caseworkers and supervisors who must respond to these ''volatile, sometimes dangerous cases'' fell from $10.68 million in 2001 to $9.6 million in 2004.
For the coming fiscal year, the budget has been upped to $10.1 million. Norman says $11.6 million is needed to handle the caseload.
''They do need more resources, no question,'' said state Sen. Susan Tucker (D-Arlington), co-chairwoman of the Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee. ''We will be advocating to get them more money in supplemental bills.''
The state's 102 elder protective service workers are expected to handle no more than 20 cases each but sometimes deal with more.
Last year, according to state statistics, 14 percent of the cases were urgent, meaning they are investigated within five hours; 25 percent needed rapid response, meaning they are checked within 24 hours; and 61 percent were routine.
But as many as 14 percent of the calls that come in to the 24 protective-service agencies cannot be handled, said Gregory Giuliano, director of protective services for the Executive Office of Elder Affairs. ''It's not an ideal situation,'' he said. ''Sometimes we cannot fully respond to the abuse report.''
A case usually begins with a call reporting elder abuse or neglect. If the elder is in imminent danger, or the case has already drawn law enforcement attention, a caseworker will go to the scene to see if the victim needs legal help.
Ellen, 71, a Weymouth woman who asked that her last name be omitted, said South Shore Elder Services rescued her from a tense situation with a live-in nephew who was intimidating her and taking her money.
''Heaven knows what would have happened without their help,'' she said. ''I did not know how to solve the problem. I love my nephew dearly, but it was very unpleasant to live around him.''
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