We have an obligation to protect the vulnerable in our society, including the elderly, writes EIBHLIN BYRNE
IT’S FITTING that my last act as Lord Mayor of Dublin will be to sign a Declaration on Elder Abuse. Whatever the rights and responsibilities, duties or obligations of the citizen, there is none greater than the protection of the vulnerable in any society.
Each of us who enjoys health, relative youth or who claims a stake in this society has the power to make better or worse older age for our family, friends and neighbours. Indeed we have obligations too to those older strangers whose paths we cross either in our personal or professional capacity.
It is important to say immediately that not all old people are vulnerable. Those who come to enjoy older age increasingly live healthy fulfilled lives with nothing left to prove and a lot left to offer.
One of the greatest mistakes any of us can make is not to harness that knowledge and experience garnered through a lifetime of living.
Where age or circumstances leave older people vulnerable, there is no monopoly on the obligation to protect them. Where abuse takes place a few are to blame, but we are all in some way responsible.
We are responsible in the way we construct our society, in the values we choose over others, in the degree to which we allow the self to become more important than the collective.
If we adopt a caring approach, a way of life that allows all vulnerable people privacy and independence while we maintain a vigilance about their protection, abuse cannot flourish. If we regard neighbourliness as an extension of family rather than a remnant of the valley of the squinting windows, we strengthen our communities young and old.
Abuse can take many forms. Physical violence or neglect, horrific though it is, may seem more obvious than other forms. Emotional abuse or neglect is more insidious but in many ways as damaging and often more difficult to detect, especially for the casual visitor.
Abuse which comes in the form of financial abuse can almost have an air of respectability and is often perpetrated by those in a position to understand financial affairs to a considerably greater extent than the older person with whom they are dealing. This is reprehensible and should be named as the violation that it is.
Whether this financial abuse comes at the hands of a family member or an institution, profiteering at the hands of a vulnerable older person is despicable and needs to be guarded against, especially in economically straitened times.
Intimidation, fear and harassment which prey on the anxieties of those who fear for their futures all constitute abuse as do discrimination and humiliation. Elder abuse is a multi-faceted coin for which many opportunities lie if we are complicit or at the least complacent.
Confronting abuse is not always as easy as it seems. More than 30 years ago I remember visiting a fragile old lady whose daughter would hide in the next room ready to rid her of the pittance we left her.
A series of eye movements from the old lady would indicate when the daughter was there. As the relationship became increasingly violent we sought and found refuge for our old lady but when her daughter, by then a prostitute, died in difficult circumstances it was with real grief that our friend mourned intensely a relationship lost and reproached herself about abandoning her abusive child.
On more than one occasion I have been approached by family members anguished by the fact that once a parent had signed over deeds of their house, the care from the sibling looking after the parent either diminished or they began to talk prematurely about the need for nursing home care.
For the other siblings, often unable to offer care themselves, the dilemma is how to confront the carer without making matters more difficult for the older person.
This problem can be even more exacerbated today as physical distances, even continents, lie between families. Solutions are not always easy or immediately apparent.
Creating an environment of caring is crucial to challenging elder abuse. Empty platitudes about having built our society on the shoulders of the men and women of our past mean nothing if we don’t promote a society that cares about and values them.
Being aware of the existence of abuse is a start. Ensuring that older people are not left to cope alone is important. We know that loneliness and isolation are realities for older people so let’s work to ensure that in every neighbourhood we include them.
There has been much talk about the housing market and financial institutions. Those working in such institutions have a duty to remain alert to the fact that for many older people, especially older women, these are alien places. We need to ensure that older people are informed, perhaps by a system of advocates so that there can be no profiting from lack of information.
Our society is now in a time of flux. Let’s harness the opportunity to promote values of caring and nurturing that we can all be proud of.
Let’s all be advocates for older people and stamp out any acceptability of the abuse of any older person no matter what the guise.
Cllr Eibhlin Byrne (FF) has been Lord Mayor of Dublin for the past year