News Tagged ‘elder abuse

State attorney hopes to form nursing home death review team

illinois state seal 150x150DuPage County, Illinois officials are stepping up their investigations into allegations of physical of elderly in and in-home health care settings, spurred in part by the horrifying story of a nursing home resident who froze to death last month after wandering outside her , according to the Chicago Tribune.

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Woman jailed for embezzling from grandparents

Connie Gay Cole was her grandparents’ favorite granddaughter. They took care of her most of her life, as she slipped in and out of employment. In return, Cole repaid them by squandering their life savings, according to The Oregonian.

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Advocacy group wants more control over caregiver training

A Washington state advocacy group is hoping to raise awareness of the problem of abuse and neglect by caregivers of the elderly and disabled before voters approve Initiative 1029 on November 4, according to Columbian.com.

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New York puts more hidden cameras in nursing homes

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that more hidden cameras will be in stalled in the rooms of some nursing home patients in western New York in an effort to curtail and , according to the Buffalo (New York) News.

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Agencies team up to prevent elder abuse

Concerned at the 71 percent increase in elder abuse cases in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, over the past five years, city officials decided to pool resources and fight back. Earlier this month Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn, Middlesex County District Attorney Gerry Leone and Elders Affairs Secretary Mike Festa announced an initiative to prevent elder , according to the Boston Globe.

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California police investigate elder abuse at assisted living facility

Rita Kittower had no choice but to put her husband of nearly 50 years into an assisted living facility after he suffered a major stroke that diminished his memory and left him unable to care for himself. Mrs. Kittower paid $75,000 a year to the upscale Silverado Senior Living facility in Calabasas, Calif., to provide her husband Elmore with the best possible care, according to the Los Angeles Times.

When he died, staff told her Mr. Kittower died peacefully in his sleep.

But when Mrs. Kittower received a call the day after burying her husband from an employee at Silverado, she was devastated. The caller said that shortly before Kittower died she saw a fellow employee punch Kittower’s husband’s face and wrap a towel around his head as if to suffocate him.

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Elder abuse, neglect often goes unnoticed

You could say that Clifford Verity meant well. He moved in with his aging mother, Ruth, took her to doctors’ appointments, even brought home fresh fish for dinner. He had worked previously as a certified nursing assistant caring for elderly in a nursing facility, and felt he could grant her wish not to be moved into a nursing home, but to age and die gracefully at home.

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a special place …

There is a horrifying report out of Minnesota today about nursing home residents abused by their caregivers. The patients, all suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, were teased, spit on, and sexually assaulted. The Associated Press report said four nursing assistants were involved.

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Rising abuse in at-home care

The Wall Street Journal published a disturbing new report this week, exploring the issue of elder by those hired to care for them in their homes. According to the report, studies show a rising trend in cases of , , fraud, and even , perpetrated by in-home caregivers on their frail and ill charges. The report estimates about 1.6 million people are employed in home care.

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2 million elderly victims

“Every day, American families face difficult decisions about whether to move a loved one into a nursing home. There are nearly 17,000 in the United States that currently care for 1.6 million residents — a figure expected to quadruple to 6.6 million residents by 2050. The quality of care provided by these has been the subject of much scrutiny in recent years.” – U.S. Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Chairman Henry A. Waxman, 110th Congress

According to the National Center on Elder (NCEA), no one knows precisely how many older Americans are being abused, neglected, or exploited. This is because there are no official national statistics.

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