According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 13.7 percent of Americans are now at least 65 years old. And startlingly, as the number of elderly people in America increases, so does elder abuse.
Seniors are most often abused by family members or caregivers who can drain their financial accounts or harm them physically or mentally through neglect or brutality.
Fortunately, a nonprofit in New York City is looking out for seniors suffering from abuse and raising awareness of the issue.
The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention operates a long-term care facility, Hebrew Home at Riverdale in New York City, which welcomes victims of abuse alongside its regular residents. Since the Weinberg Center opened in 2005, it’s funded over 53,000 shelter days for needy seniors — admitting about a dozen victims each year.
The Weinberg Center provides victims with medical attention, psychological counseling, social services, and activities, so the seniors — many of whom were isolated by their caregivers — can feel a part of a community again. According to Nicole Lewis of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, about half of the seniors the Weinberg Center provides emergency shelter to choose to stay on at Hebrew House.
Joy Solomon, the co-founder and director of the Weinberg Center told Lewis, “So many victims remain in the shadows, untouched and unknown.”
Which is exactly why they’re educating the public to be on the alert for elder abuse, even conducting workshops for Manhattan doormen instructing them on the telltale signs.
Dennis P. Brady, executive managing director for a company that manages two Upper East Side apartment buildings with many elderly residents arranged for the training, and told Winnie Hu of the New York Times last year, “It’s a good thing to do if we can help one person.”
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Tag: elderly
States Are Working to Keep Seniors on Their Feet
$67.7 billion.
That’s the anticipated cost of medical bills due to falls among the elderly by 2020, estimated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Falls aren’t just catastrophic for seniors because of the expense. According to the American Recall Center, one in every 200 falls in people ages 65 to 69 and one in 10 falls in people over the age of 85 causes a hip fracture. Of those with broken bones, 25 percent die within six months. As a result, elderly people are often so afraid of falling that they cease engaging in activities that were once important to them.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, as a variety of programs across the country are focusing on fall prevention.
Back in 2011, the CDC gave the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health a $1.5 million grant to study the effectiveness of fall prevention programs. They found that two programs sponsored by the Pennsylvania Department of Aging — Healthy Steps for Older Adults, a four-hour workshop, and Healthy Steps in Motion, an eight-week exercise class — reduced falls by 17 percent.
Another such program is the one offered by Wichita State University in Kansas. There, researchers assembled the Falling Less in Kansas toolkit, a free downloadable guide that allows seniors to assess their risk of falls and make necessary changes to prevent them.
The state of Ohio is also trying to prevent falls among seniors with an online program called Steady U. The website advises people how to arrange their houses to prevent falls — including tips such as keeping stairways clear, rugs securely attached to the floor, and adding night lights.
“We know that falls are the leading cause of injuries, ER visits and death,” John Ratliff, the Ohio Department of Aging’s Assistant Chief of Communications and Government Outreach told Hilary Young of the Huffington Post. “Coupled with the fact that our population is rapidly aging, it’s our responsibility to try new, innovative approaches to education about fall prevention to help our elders.”
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How ‘The Golden Girls’ Can Help Solve a Problem Facing Senior Women
“The Golden Girls” went off the air in 1992, but many of us still remember the show about four senior women sharing a home in Miami, in part because there hasn’t been anything else like it on T.V.
It turns out “The Golden Girls” was ahead of its time in more ways than one, and that its model of communal living—with some good-natured bickering thrown in—might provide a solution to a problem facing millions of Baby Boomer women as they reach retirement age. One third of Baby Boomer women live alone, and 50.8 percent of the 78.2 million Boomers in America are women. Many of these single women are divorced, a situation that often leaves their finances in disarray as they head into retirement.
According to the PBS NewsHour, the median income of senior women in Minneapolis was $11,000 less than that for men, which gave Connie Skillingstad an idea. She runs Golden Girl Homes, Inc., which helps match older women in the Twin Cities with others who’d like to reduce loneliness and split expenses by sharing a home. She told Spencer Michels of the NewsHour that each of the women who band together as roommates offers some asset that can help the others. “For example, there are women who have no money, but they have a house. They have space and they can share it with somebody, and it will help them to survive,” she said.
Karen Bush, Louise Machinist, and Jean McQuillan are longtime friends in their 60s, each of them divorced, who now share houses in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Sarasota, Florida. The women reach agreements about cooking, cleaning, finances, and what to do should any of them fall ill. They have legal documents in place stipulating what would happen if any of them are no longer able to take care of themselves. Together, they’re renovating their Florida condo to allow them to age in place. Bush told Michels, “The whole setup that we have here is going to help me be independent for a long time. And at the point at which I can no longer be independent, I will have additional resources to pay for what I need.”
Half a million women over the age of 50 in America live with roommates who are not romantic partners. Now this sounds like a case of smart women banding together to solve their own problems. Could a sitcom be next?
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These Startups Offer Sleek Technological Innovations for the Elderly
Whether we’re talking about Snapchat, Twitter, or Uber, most start-ups focus on technologies for young folks. But Katy Fike, a 35-year-old former investment banker who holds a Ph.D. in gerontology (aka, the study of aging), thought an important opportunity to offer innovative services for the elderly was being missed.
So she, along with Stephen Johnston, who once worked in the mobile phone industry, she started Aging2.0, a start-up incubator that supports businesses working on solutions to the challenges facing the elderly. Fike told Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour, “The past products for seniors have been what we call big, beige and boring.” The inventors and start-ups working with Aging2.0 aim to change that.
Lively is one such company, offering technology that lets family members unobtrusively check on elderly relatives who live independently. Users place sensors throughout the house that indicate when the elderly person is engaging in his or her regular routine — walking the dog, going to exercise class, and taking medications, for example. If the user misses one of the regular portions of his or her routine, the Lively website will indicate this so a remote family member can check in to see if everything is okay.
Other new technology products targeted toward the elderly include BrainAid, a web-based application that offers memory exercises, and Sabi, a company designing walking canes, pill boxes and pill splitters to be more attractive and user-friendly. Through Lift Hero, elderly people can arrange for rides from off-duty EMTs and medical professional drivers so they know they’ll arrive at their destination safely.
Aging2.0 is based in San Francisco at The Institute on Aging, a nonprofit senior center, so entrepreneurs can learn from the people they’re designing for, and get advice from seniors such as 81-year-old June Fisher, a product design lecturer at Stanford and Aging 2.0’s Chief Elder Executive. “We see real potential to bring in the technology folks, bring in the investors, bring in the designers, because I think the more smart brains we have thinking about and looking for new solutions, the better we will all be,” Fike said. Now that’s putting our elders’ wisdom to good use.
MORE: Why is This Doctor Telling Grandmas to Balance on One Leg While Brushing Their Teeth?
Why Is This Doctor Telling Grandmas to Balance on One Leg While Brushing Their Teeth?
Falls are always a danger to the elderly. More than half of people over age 80 fall each year, and falls are the leading cause of injury to seniors. In Wisconsin, the death rate among elderly people after a fall is double the national average, so one doctor decided to try to do something to reduce the risk. Dr. Irene Hamrick of the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health learned about a program in Australia called the Lifestyle and Functional Exercise program, or LiFE, that was improving seniors’ balance by incorporating simple exercises into their daily routines. Participants in the program reduced their rate of falls by 31 percent over a year of follow-up, and increased their strength.
Dr. Hamrick adapted LiFE for Wisconsin seniors. She recruited people over 70 in Wausau, Wis., to enroll in a pilot program that asked participants to perform simple strength and balance exercises during the day, like standing on one leg while brushing their teeth. The program runs counter to the standard advice that physicians give to the elderly about avoiding activities that may be challenging to their balance.
Dr. Hamrick plans to expand the program statewide, saying in a statement, “We are very excited with the success we have seen so far. Patients really want to do the program, and we have not had anyone drop out.”
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Why Don’t Old People Like Talking to Robots?
The 2012 movie Robot and Frank imagined a not-too-distant America in which companion robots are used to assist the elderly in daily living. It’s not so far-fetched — many researchers are working to make this sci-fi scenario a reality in the U.S. (Robots already assist with elder care in Japan.) But a new study suggests that older Americans might not feel comfortable with an automated assistant. Researchers at the universities of Notre Dame and Missouri studied 65 seniors in an elder-care setting, and noted how they gave a robot directions, such as to fetch their glasses in a different room. Then the researchers compared how the seniors communicated the same request to a fellow human, and found that the seniors spoke conversationally with people, while using terser, more direction-oriented requests with the robots. Both ways get the job done, but the seniors reported preferring to speak with the human. Studying the exact words seniors use to talk to robots is important so scientists can program robots accurately, and better understand how to make machines serve man more effectively.