29th November- Older People’s Experiences of Domestic Abuse
Older people within the UK can also be victims of domestic abuse. Such abuse victims are likely to be dependent on the person abusing them financially or for their care. They will face, in addition to fear, barriers to reporting this abuse such as lack of physical and mental capacity and a lack of access to digital or other services.
Those over 75, are now included within the domestic abuse data reporting of the Crime Survey of England and Wales. This is an important step towards making society safer and acknowledging that older people are also victims of domestic abuse.
In Barking and Dagenham this is an area we want to get better at, and we were pleased to see that the IRIS programme recently came to the borough – a programme to improve identification of domestic abuse in GP practices and improve the response and referrals into specialist support. Adult’s social care play a big part in our local partnership groups too, in relation to domestic abuse.
What sort of barriers do you think older people face when dealing with domestic abuse?
Support links