Elder Abuse and Mistreatment
Elder abuse and mistreatment is a many-sided social problem in the modern society, as it touches such spheres as health care, social services rendering, socio-economic protection and observance of human rights. The elderly are the most vulnerable social group due to their age, low capacity for work and competitiveness on the labor market or serious illnesses. During the previous century level of their social protection has been increasing owing to approval of international social standards and signing of international conventions.
Social workers should not only prevent development of these phenomena, but consider them from scientific point of view. Efficient counter-measures should be taken to identify reasons and sources of the abuse of this social group. A developed hypothesis relates to interrelationship of level of social and law knowledge of the elderly and prevention of abuse/mistreatment. This problem has been previously examined by Aurora Salamone, Marion Brickner, Luciana Oginionin and others. For example, Silvernet Study focused upon the elderly mistreatment in the home care programs and their fallacious behavioral patterns. Nikki DiFranks discovered the issue under dissection through the prism of Code of Ethics and social workers’ competency. In contrast with other investigations the present study aims to identify interdependence between social workers’ competency and abuse and mistreatment of the elderly.
Code of Ethics (NASW) is a basic source of regulation for social workers, involving in the programs and investigations for the elderly. At the same time, they should rely on their education, life and professional experience to develop an efficient cooperation with the group members and pay attention of other age/sex/ethnic/religious/economic groups to this problem. According to Eileen Gambrill, an objective data collection and assessment together with workers’ personal skills stipulate positive results of the study. Successful evidence-based practice (EBP) must be based upon reliable information collected and sorted out as to distinctive variables. “EBP encourages the integration of research and practice, for example, by highlighting the importance of clinicians’ critically appraising research reviews and developing a technology to help them to do so.” (Gambrill, 2007) Evidence-based practitioners deal with a cross-discipline context, as their sphere of work is connected with social welfare, education, health care system, philosophy of science and technology.
To achieve success social workers must find common language with the group under their charge. All complaints and requests should be carefully structured and analyzed to distinguish mechanisms of abuse and mistreatment. In this case, a quantitative descriptive study offered by DiFranks shows how belief and behavior scores of NASW workers impact...