ADDRESSING ELDER ABUSE IN ETHNO-CULTURAL MINORITY COMMUNITIES IN BC: MAPPING THE KNOWLEDGE GAP

摘要

This project represents a collaborative effort between academic researchers, elder law practitioners, and not-for-profit multicultural service provider administrators and staff. It addresses elder abuse in relationship to two other salient themes, the law and ethnicity, identified by the National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly as priority areas for research, networking, and knowledge transfer in improving the care of older adults. The project has three main objectives: (1) to explore the nature of elder abuse in the two largest ethnocultural minority communities in BC, the Chinese and South Asians; (2) to conduct a mapping exercise to determine what elder abuse tools – both digital and paper – currently exist for these communities; and (3) to present our assessment to a meta-focus group of key service provider representatives to solicit their feedback on our findings, and to create both a visual map of resources and an agenda for developing needed tools. Two key outcomes that have emerged from this leadership collaboration are: (1) a visual map of existing and needed resources that will be used to build awareness to prevent, recognize, and respond to elder abuse in these communities; and (2) the development of one awareness-building tool for each community – a poster – that fills an identified gap in the current resource pool. In the end, the project served to improve support for elder abuse response mechanisms by: (1) facilitating the sharing of resources across participant organizations and their affiliates; and (2) enhancing already-existing informal and formal networks of support across sectors.