Kelly Vincent – Radio Adelaide Interview on Elder Abuse
19/10/2015
On 19th October 2015, Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent was interviewed on Radio Adelaide about the passing of her Motion for the Social Development Committee to investigate into elder abuse. Here is the transcript from the interview.
Newton: Concerns of elder abuse in South Australia has led to an investigation being sanctioned by the SA Parliament. Kelly Vincent, how severe is the issue of elder abuse in South Australia?
Kelly Vincent: That’s actually one of the things we’d like to find out. We want to give people a safe place to come forward and talk about what they’re experiencing so we can actually find out the size of the problem. My office is dealing with several cases each week where older South Australians are feeling isolated, neglected, and at worst abuse, so this is a very serious issue that needs to be looked at in detail.
Newton: Are we talking about being abused by family members or being denied certain things?
Kelly Vincent: The terms of reference of the inquiry are very broad and we’ve done that deliberately so that everyone feels they have the opportunity to come forward if they have experienced anything they would call abuse. So the terms of reference include, but are not limited to, physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and financial abuse.
Newton: How long do you think this investigation will take?
Kelly Vincent: At this point it’s unlikely to go ahead until probably later next year because the Social Development Committee does have a number of matters it’s already looking into but once it does get underway I would expect it to at least run for three or four months but it could expand depending on the number of submissions that we receive.
Newton: The Age Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Ryan has called for a national approach to this issue. Have Local and State Governments let the elderly community down do you think?
Kelly Vincent: Unfortunately we’d be naïve to think that this type of abuse was only occurring in South Australia. It would be nice to think that one State Government or one state Parliament could come in and wipe the whole thing out but I think there is a need for a national approach as there is for people with disabilities, and I think any forum to give more attention to this issue, given that I am hearing of particularly aged care workers who do tell me that this is happening but not wanting to come publicly forward because of fear of ramifications for their employment, any forum that is available to have a discussion about this and to bring these issues to the light should be taken up.
Newton: It is illegal to harm another human being, are investigations like this important more because it causes people to reflect on their own behaviour rather than the laws that may come into place because of that investigation?
Kelly Vincent: We do need to challenge behaviours and perhaps get people questioning whether what they have considered normal behaviour is in fact a type of abuse or neglect and we know from the disability sector that the exact same thing happens there where what would otherwise be recognised quite clearly as blatant abuse is often confused as a normal part of support delivery or service delivery. So it would seem that the same thing is happening in the aged community, and I think another important point is the fact that often the type of abuse experienced by older people can be quite coercive and almost subtle in a way. It could be somebody taking control of their parent’s pension if that person is developing for example dementia and might not notice quite as readily that the person is interfering or it could be someone going to the pharmacy to get that person’s medication for them and then lo and behold they come back from the pharmacy and they haven’t got the medication but they have got a nice new moisturiser for themselves or something like that. Often these types of abuse are very coercive and because I think older people, particularly older people living in residential care, are sometimes very grateful for the support they’re receiving.
Newton: That’s right, they’re emotionally vulnerable because of that.
Kelly Vincent: Absolutely and I think because they’ve become normalised in feeling grateful for the support they’re receiving from family and from professional aged support workers that they’re perhaps more unlikely to come forward because they’re fearful of losing that support.
Newton: What do you think, given that we know there are instances of abuse happening, and that testimony will be brought out, what would you like to see as some of the recommendations that come out of this investigation?
Kelly Vincent: The investigation will look into existing policy, both Government and non-Government policy around how we support older people to be protected from abuse and that includes protecting people once abuse does occur but also making sure that older people have the knowledge and the skills and the authority to speak out about abuse and recognise abuse so that they don’t fall into the trap of it occurring to them and I think this is particularly important in the area of things like telemarketing and online scams. I don’t want to be too generalist here but given the fact that older people haven’t grown up with some modern technologies, I think they can fall more easily prey to things like online scams so we want to look very holistically at existing policies how they’re working and also what the guts are in existing policies to make sure that we can protect older people when they are abused. But also make sure that people have the skills and the knowledge to prevent themselves potentially from being abused in the first place.
Newton: Thank so much Kelly.
