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A Message from the Vice President

In British Columbia, 8% or nearly 40,000 seniors have experienced some form of abuse. One in 12 seniors has encountered financial abuse. CEAS has been working toward creating change for abused seniors by developing information and educational materials such as Money Matters for Seniors, a video training kit, and providing education and support to a wide range of community groups. The guidance seniors have provided for all our projects has made our materials and workshops the successes they have become.

CEAS's primary goals are to encourage the development of local services for abused seniors and to increase public awareness of abuse of seniors. Yet, our very accomplishments in this area have confronted us with new challenges. In 1997 alone CEAS received 100 calls concerning individuals in abusive situations, a number that has increased steadily during 1998. How to respond to these calls in an ethical manner while honouring our constitutional purpose has become a major issue of discussion for the Board.

There is little doubt that we need resources in the caller's home community to provide effective and practical assistance to those seniors most vulnerable to abuse. The issue, however, becomes more tricky when we consider that resources are not consistently available in all communities across the province. Seniors in rural communities may not have easy access to some support services.

They may not have any choice between resources and don't trust the service they could access. Yet rural communities are known to pull together and rally around a cause. This helps when building coordinated and sensitive responses to seniors in abusive situations. In smaller communities, local resources, if available at all, are more visible and easier to access than a similar resource in a metropolitan center. Over two-thirds of the calls CEAS receives about individuals experiencing abuse are from the Lower Mainland. One reason for this high percentage may be that the urban maze of public and non-profit agencies is difficult to sort through for any senior and challenging to coordinate into a Community Response Network for any facilitator.

Regional differences in the availability as well as the responsiveness of local agencies and organizations add to the difficulty for CEAS. Should CEAS keep its current purpose to promote the rights of all abused seniors by working toward policy changes and increased public awareness? Or should it adopt a new goal that includes advocacy for individuals who are calling for help? Individual advocacy can involve helping a caller define what the problem is. One-on-one advocacy can mean offering a referral by contacting the referral resource and ensuring that the caller receives an appropriate response. Should CEAS maintain its current purpose and provincial focus and restrict itself to providing only information to callers concerned about individual situations? In practice the line is difficult to draw between these approaches and the "information only" response may feel uncaring and bureaucratic to the caller as well as the person answering the phone. On the other hand, by providing a referral and advocacy service we might fill a gap in resources and inadvertently let "off the hook" those communities which have not yet developed a coordinated response for abused seniors.

A recent survey of our membership has given CEAS clear direction to not become involved in one-on-one advocacy but rather stay focussed on the "big picture" as an organization serving the entire province. Still, the question of how we can best help prevent and stop abuse of seniors will come up again in different ways and will be revisited in different contexts as we evolve as an organization.

-Brigitte Wagner