Call to fight back against elder abuse

Published on 13/06/2012 14:30

World Elder Abuse Awareness Day is on Friday – a day when the whole world voices its opposition to the harm and suffering that is inflicted on some of our older generations.

Harm and neglect of older people is one of the last great taboos, but has hit the headlines recently with documentaries detailing mistreatment of the elderly, and inclusion of adult protection issues within major soaps.

Their depiction of abuse has highlighted the difficulties many elderly people face in being aware of what harm is – knowing when behaviour is unacceptable or criminal, and knowing how to report harm, particularly when it involves abuse by family members or staff.

But what if you need help to talk to someone? It isn’t always easy to get people to listen to you.

Margaret Murdoch of Fife Elderly Forum, told the Mail: “Older people must be listened to, and make their voice heard.

“People need to participate and get involved. There are many groups and organisations which will take your concerns forward and help you to be heard. If you need help to talk to someone, an advocate can help you to speak up for yourself, or can speak on your behalf about the things that are important to you. Fife Elderly Forum provide advocacy for older people and you can call them on 01592 643743.

“Everyone has the right to be safe. If you are experiencing harm or neglect, you must tell someone. You can call the Adult Protection Phone Line on 01383 602200. A member of staff will make sure that you are safe, get you medical treatment if you need it, contact the police if a crime is suspected and involve professionals to investigate and protect you from further harm. Don’t let harm happen to you. Let someone know.”

News

Local Headlines

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Call to fight back against elder abuse

Top stories

News

Local Headlines