SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — The Vera House hosted its first elder abuse prevention workshop yesterday. Jenny Ackley, the event coordinator, explains that with more elders in the country, more elder abuse cases are likely to happen. When it comes to defining an elder, Ackley says it depends.
With elder abuse cases, Lori DiCaprio-Lee, who works with elder identity theft with the Vera House, says the people responsible aren’t the ones people typically think about.
“Very few financial exploitation cases are stranger scams, a small percent about four percent but you tend to hear about them more because they’re sensational,” she said.
Ackley explains who is usually responsible.
“It’s mostly the family, 90% of the time you’re talking about a family member. Whether it’s a child, grandchild, sister, brother, who is taking advantage of someone in their family,” she said.
The speaker for the event was Alan Berkowitz, who believes people need to treat abuse differently than they’re used to.
“And most of the time we respond to a problem after it happens, so primary prevention, or what we call proactive prevention, is creating a climate where the problem doesn’t happen,” he said.
Vera House is looking forward, and still discussing what next steps to take to continue the trend of prevent elder abuse, rather than reacting to it.
