For those of us who have long advocated for a national agenda to prevent, detect, treat and report the mistreatment of older adults, developments over the summer have sparked some measure of hope and optimism.
The cause of elder justice hit the trifecta, with good news coming from all three branches of the federal government. First, the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act represented a victory for the Elder Justice Act as well. Enacted by Congress as part of the ACA, the Elder Justice Act targets the widespread issue of elder abuse in communities and long-term care facilities.
Then, at last month’s White House Conference on Aging, President Obama announced that a new rule to be issued by the end of 2015 will clarify that, among other approved uses, assistance funds from the Victims of Crime Act may be used to aid elder victims of abuse, financial exploitation, fraud, and neglect.
Most recently, the U.S. Senate took a much-needed step to support older adults by passing—without opposition—the Older Americans Act Reauthorization of 2015, which funds critical services that keep our nation’s seniors healthy and independent.
Clearly, much work remains to be done to ensure that older Americans live the rest of their lives in dignity, receive expert geriatric care, and are safe from all types of mistreatment. But the steps taken so far this summer are all in the right direction.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Elder Justice Act, and the high court decision in the Affordable Care Act case removes some of the doubt that surrounded it while the law was being challenged. The Elder Justice Act takes aim at developing and implementing strategies to decrease the likelihood of elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
It employs three significant approaches to accomplish its mission of promoting elder justice:
- The creation of a Coordinating Council and an Advisory Board, both of which are charged with recommending multidisciplinary tactics for reducing elder abuse at the local, state, and federal levels.
- The allotment of grant money and financial incentives to improve staffing, quality of care, and technology in long-term care facilities and boost the effectiveness of states' adult protective services departments.
- And perhaps most significantly, a provision that requires facilities receiving federal funding to adhere to a strict reporting requirement.
The White House Conference on Aging brought more encouraging news on issues related to elder justice in addition to the Victims of Crime Act announcement. Among other announcements that came out of the once-a-decade event:
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will issue a proposed rule which, according to the White House, "will update for the first time in nearly 25 years the quality and safety requirements for the more than 15,000 nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities to improve quality of life, enhance person-centered care and services for residents in nursing homes, improve resident safety, and bring these regulatory requirements into closer alignment with current professional standards."
- The U.S. Department of Justice will train elder abuse prosecutors in all 50 states to effectively prosecute elder abuse and financial exploitation and develop online training for law enforcement officers.
- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will convene a state-of-the-art workshop on elder abuse in the fall to review the science on understanding and preventing abuse, examine screening tools to identify abuse victims, review effective interventions and research in related areas such as child abuse and domestic violence that might inform research on elder abuse, and focus on gaps and opportunities in this field of research. Further, the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice and its Elder Justice Initiative will fund a multiyear pilot project to evaluate potential means to avoid and respond to elder mistreatment.
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will release by the end of 2015 an advisory to help financial institutions prevent, recognize, and report elder financial exploitation.
Finally, the Older Americans Act (OAA) Reauthorization of 2015 includes stronger elder justice and legal services provisions. We are hopeful that the U.S. House of Representatives will act quickly in the bipartisan spirit that marked Senate approval and pass into law this crucial reauthorization of the OAA.
As promising as these developments have been, there is still a lot of work ahead. But we are grateful that actions taken across all three branches of government have helped to shine a light on the issue of elder justice this summer and move efforts forward to ensure that older Americans are ultimately treated with the dignity they so richly deserve.