Madam Chair and honourable members, thank you for inviting Seniors First BC to speak today on the important issue of elder abuse.
Seniors First BC is a non-profit organization that provides direct services to vulnerable seniors across the province of B.C. Our services include a seniors abuse and information line, victim services, legal services, and a public education and outreach program.
The seniors abuse and information line is our organization's front door, and we have attached statistics on calls to our brief. Between 2019 and 2021, the two most common types of abuse reported by callers were, one, emotional and psychological abuse and, two, financial abuse. These will be the focus of our presentation today.
With regard to psychological and emotional abuse, as we've heard, most abusers are family members. Most seniors do not wish to involve the police due to a combination of fears of repercussions for their loved ones and concerns about finding an alternative caregiver, but also due to the belief that they will not be taken seriously. Our workers frequently report hearing complaints about agencies' disregarding the older adults' concerns, assuming that they have dementia, are incompetent or do not understand what is happening to them.
Our victim services workers also hear from clients who actually have contacted the police, and the abuser has actually encouraged them to call the police because the abuser already knows the routine. A police officer comes, de-escalates the situation and leaves. Shortly thereafter, the abuser returns. Sometimes the police refuse to write a report because they consider this to be a civil or a family matter.
We have heard positive stories about local enforcement, typically in which the officer listened to the older adult's story, had a frank conversation with the abuser—sometimes warning them of possible criminal consequences—and followed up with the adult. Such successful approaches typically come from small communities in B.C.
Our recommendation, therefore, is to provide better training for dealing with elder abuse to local enforcement agencies, including [Technical difficulty—Editor] and to encourage investigation and follow-up.
In the context of abuse in institutionalized care, we support Graham Webb's recommendations to create the distinct offence of criminal endangerment and to provide strong whistle-blower protection to residents and substitute decision-makers.
The second common type of abuse reported by callers is financial abuse, and most financial exploitation of seniors, again, involves a family member or person in a position of trust through either a power of attorney or a joint bank account. Fraud also happens more and more frequently through international scams.
Unlike credit card companies, banks and credit unions do not monitor for suspicious activity on their clients' accounts. In the rare instances where financial institutions have been sued for negligence, courts have found that they did not hold any duty of care to their account holders or third parties. Ideally, there should be a legislated duty of care for financial institutions. Potential confidentiality issues about customers' accounts could be covered in the account agreement.
Another possible first step would be to introduce legislation protecting whistle-blowers at financial institutions, like the U.S. Senior Safe Act, which provides immunity from liability in any civil or administrative proceedings. Trained employees of financial institutions, such as bank tellers, advisers and investment bankers, report potential exploitation of senior citizens, even if it would otherwise violate privacy legislation, and they're provided training.
In our opinion, raising the alarm, if followed by investigation and action from law enforcement, would at least have a freezing effect on the author of the fraudulent behaviour.
Thank you.