‘Open season’ on the elderly

It’s ‘open season’ on the elderly when it comes to caregiver financial grooming and abuse in New Zealand.
In fact, I have discovered that when it comes to protecting the interests of the elderly, there really isn’t any protection at all for this most vulnerable population.

I have been spending some time reviewing what protective factors exist in the aged care industry, when it comes to guarding against the possibility of vulnerable elderly being exploited by state-funded or private in-home caregivers.

It turns out that the agencies that are charged with helping the 2200 complainants per annum of elder abuse in New Zealand, such as the Elder Abuse Response Service, Age Concern, or Grey Power, are simply toothless state-funded echo chambers into which complaints go to die; the police are not interested in helping complainants unless it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed; the Health & Disability Commission complaints process can take over twelve months to reach a decision as to whether a breach of the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights has occurred, for no meaningful sanction; and the courts only seem to be concerned with what is legal, not what is ethical in this space.

One case I became familiar with was a woman who worked as an in-home caregiver, who had groomed and then financially exploited so many elderly clients, she ended up with a portfolio of ten properties to her name. The woman was blatant in what she was doing, the families of the elderly clients couldn’t stop her, and the police didn’t want to know about what was going on.

Based on what I have discovered so far, there are dozens, possibly hundreds of cases of elder financial grooming and abuse by both family member and third-party in-home caregivers in particular, that have, and are occurring in New Zealand.

This abuse is hiding in plain sight, and there is no meaningful state authority to stop this abuse occurring.
This situation needs to change, because pretending to care about elderly financial grooming and abuse, without the power to do anything about elderly financial grooming and abuse, is both morally and ethically misleading to the public.

See more information on this topic at https://bewarecare.org/