Abuse in Elderly Care Homes

Abuse in elderly care homes happens nationwide. Although most people don’t want to think that their loved ones can be abused, it's important to know what to look for and how to report elder abuse.

Signs of Abuse in Elderly Care Homes

An estimated 12 million Americans will need long-term care by 2020. Many people turn to nursing homes to care for their loved ones. While assisted living facilities are sufficient for many seniors, other with severe disabilities may require a nursing home or elder care home.

How to Spot Abuse

We’d all like to believe that nursing homes are staffed by caring people. Unfortunately, few professions are immune to problem and criminal behavior. While many nursing homes and elderly care facilities receive ratings from independent organizations, these rating systems are far from perfect. Many ratings systems rely upon voluntary completion of questionnaires, and some homes do not complete the questionnaires.

The website nursing home ratings provides a state-by-state, clickable guide to let you find specific nursing homes in your area and review their occupancy rates as well as their individual scorecards.

The best way to spot abuse in elderly care homes is with your own eyes, so it’s important to visit elderly loved ones and relatives frequently. Abuse, or the intentional harm of an elderly person, exhibits definite signs. According to the non profit group A Perfect Cause, some of the signs of physical and sexual assault among elderly people include:

• Difficulty standing, walking, or participating in normal physical activities. If your loved one is already immobile, look for sudden declines in whatever mobility he or she had.
• Bruises, cuts, and scrapes inconsistent with typical bumps. This may indicate physical abuse.
• Genital or anal bleeding, which may indicate rape.
• Sexually transmitted diseases, which may also indicate rape.
• Sudden changes in personality.
• Withdrawn or depressed behavior, or the extreme opposite: agitation. Elderly people who cannot speak at all, or cannot speak clearly, may become agitated because they are trying to tell you what is going on, but can’t get the words out.

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish normal changes in the elderly from changes due to abuse. The key is to look for sudden, drastic or dramatic changes. Knowing what is normal for the person, especially in terms of movement and cognitive abilities, can help you distinguish signs of abuse from other manifestations of illness or aging.

Signs of Neglect

Neglect is often a result of a poor ratio of caregivers to patients or incompetent or poorly-trained staff. Signs of neglect among patients in elderly care homes include:

• Malnutrition or dehydration. Many patients require assistance eating and drinking, and weight loss, malnutrition and dehydration are signs that care is not being taken to ensure that the patients are getting adequate food and water.
• Poor grooming, soiled clothes or bed linens. Patients who require help with personal hygiene but who aren’t getting the care they need may have stained clothing, smell bad from lack of bathing, or have knotted or matted hair.
• Bedsores. Patients who cannot turn over in bed are prone to bedsores. Bedsores or pressure sores are painful ulcers created by sitting or laying on one part of the body for many hours. The pressure cuts off circulation to the tissue, causing it to die. The affected area may become infected. In rare cases, bedsores can cause death. They often point to neglect because patients in nursing homes aren't turned in bed or helped to shift position as frequently as needed.

The National Citizen’s Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, another non profit organization dedicated to quality care for the elderly, offers a comprehensive fact sheet to help you spot signs and symptoms of both neglect and abuse.

Reporting Abuse

If you’ve come to the conclusion that your loved one may be abused, there are several steps you can take. Visit one of the following websites to find your state resources and reporting agencies.

• The National Center on Elder Abuse provides a state-by-state resource which includes laws, state reporting and monitoring offices for elderly care homes. Check your specific state to find out more information on how and where to report suspected abuse.
• The National Long Term Care Ombudsman website offers an overview of the statewide long term care system, with a map to make it easy to click through for more information. The ombudsmen working for this organization are dedicated to protecting seniors’ rights and enhancing the quality of their care, and are supposed to work with you to fix the problem or report the neglect to the proper authorities.

While most nursing and elderly care homes offer quality care for seniors, sometimes situations arise in which the elderly are neglected and abused. Fortunately, most of this abuse is rare. If you suspect abuse in such a facility, reporting it to the proper authorities helps ensure not just the safety of your own loved one, but others too.

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