As World Elder Abuse Awareness Day was marked on Thursday, Joburg social workers told a grim tale of growing mistreatment of the city's aged.

"Beth", a frail 67-year-old woman from Kliptown, Soweto, lived with her grandson until she was placed in an old age home late last year -- partly to protect her from him.

Beth's daughter, a single parent, had died, leaving her to look after her tearaway grandchild -- but the 13-year-old would regularly steal and spend all her pension money.

"I would ask my grandson to give me some of the money because I was hungry, and he would tell me he didn't have any, and that I would sit and die of hunger," said Beth, who spoke to Metro on condition of anonymity.

She reported her grandson to the police for stealing her pension, and the police asked Rajis Govender, chief social worker for Age in Action, to place her in an old age home.

"I found her with no shoes and a tree branch she used as a walking stick," Govender said.

Queen Mudzanani, a social worker at the Soweto Home for the Aged, said her organisation dealt with up to 15 cases of elder abuse every week, whereas in the past they would deal with at most five cases a week.

Shirley Merime, founder of the Ebenezer Care Centre, near Vereeniging, said that in the first five months of this year, she dealt with 15 elderly people abandoned by their families. Last year she dealt with a total of 20 cases.

Mudzanani said old people's children sometimes resisted their removal to homes because "they want to spend the grant money for themselves".

Karen Meyer, Gauteng director of Age in Action, blamed families who "just want to get the pension".

Mudzanani said it was often difficult for elderly people to admit that their family was abusing them. "They don't just disclose -- you have to build a relationship with them. Then they open up, they cry, and you know things are really bad," she said.

Govender said the old folk still love their families and did not want to report their ill treatment for fear of consequences they might suffer.

Mudzanani said it was neighbours who mostly reported abuse to social workers.

But sometimes the family just doesn't know any better. Govender said some relatives did not know how to cope with the illnesses that come with age.

"The elder might have episodes of memory loss, hearing and sight might be dim and the family does not know how to deal with that," she said.