More effective legislation is needed to prosecute people who engage in elder abuse.
This was one of the recommendations coming out of Brasstacks Sunday on Starcom Network yesterday where the issue was examined prior to World Elder Abuse Awareness Day on Wednesday.
The panel featured acting director of the National Assistance Board (NAB) Colleen Walcott, president of the Barbados Association of Retired Persons, Marilyn Rice-Bowen, attorney and convenor of the Bar Association’s human rights committee Nailah Robinson, and a relative of a victim of elder abuse referred to as “Maggie”. The moderator was Glyne Murray.
Robinson said there was a need to empower the elderly by making it easier to bring before the courts persons “engaging in exploitation and financial abuse” of that group, and to further empower social workers who have to deal with those situations.
She also wanted to see more statistics and data, a shortcoming noted earlier by Walcott, who said “there is a dearth of information as it relates to elder abuse and therefore we do not have a true sense of the prevalence of the abuse”. (JS)
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