Status of Women Committee on Oct. 18th, 2011

[Cathy Bennett]

If you gear interventions that are misplaced, you will not succeed. That is key.

A clear example is women's shelters. Those have not been found to be effective for senior women. One of the main reasons is accessibility to the building and accessibility within the building. If they have particular disabilities or limitations that prevent them from being able to access and move around freely within the building, it's....

[Marla Israel]

Yes, and just to sum that up,

as soon as we pay attention to the factors involved with these challenges, changes will be made in order to adapt to the people.

[Charmaine Borg, NDP, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Just—

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

I am sorry, Ms. Borg, your five minutes are up.

I would like to ask the witnesses a question.

If you could please provide the gender-based analysis to which you referred to the clerk of our committee, it would be much appreciated.

Going on to the next member, we have Mr. Holder.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank our guests for being here today.

I would like to share my time with Ms. Young. She has a specific question she would like to ask, and with your indulgence, I'd like to ask her to start, please.

[Wai Young, Conservative, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Holder. I appreciate that.

I have a specific question because my own mother experienced financial and senior abuse. It was not just financial, but physical as well, from my brother. This is a very personal and deep family situation that happened about four years ago, just before all of these preventions we are hearing about and all of the new funding and everything. I personally took her to many different agencies, both public health and the police, because it did become a police incident. At every single level she was not believed. Your step one, in terms of senior abuse—in my culture, a Chinese woman coming out at the age of 75 to say “I am being abused by my son,” and not being believed by all of these officials that I personally took her to.... In meeting after meeting, the police actually said “because it's your own son, we cannot charge him”. If he had been a stranger, and not our own family, they can charge these people. Since it is our own family, we were told they cannot.

I come at this with a great amount of interest, obviously, and with a whole bunch of questions that we will be exploring in the next couple of weeks and months to come. I think the work you are doing is amazing and fabulous. With the 15 agencies you are coordinating, we absolutely need to have a coordinated response to this issue, which I think is going to grow in our country. I was particularly thrilled by your comment that public health happens locally. It is through the local networks and everybody's education and information that we will combat what is going to become a huge community issue.

My question to you is this. On the other side of that, now that we have implemented this plan and highlighted this approach, and now that our government has put funds, efforts, and priorities to this, what program evaluations and outcomes are you using to measure how effective this has been? What more can we do? At this side of the table, now and three years later, I want to ensure that those measures are in place. I want to ensure that no other senior is put in the situation of going to somebody and not being believed and not getting help.

I know you have outlined a whole series of measures and steps. I want to know what is being anticipated or will be implemented to measure these steps, and to know what more we need to do.

[Marla Israel]

First, thank you so much for sharing that with us. It informs our work to know that in the Chinese community, a woman at the age of 70-odd years was feeling so bad that she felt the need and did feel the need and thankfully told people about it. I'm sorry; I feel very bad that people did not believe her. I think that's what we're all trying to combat today, in the work that we're undertaking.

With respect to program evaluation, definitely within the Public Health Agency what we're trying to achieve is knowledge of how these initiatives have made a difference and how they can be measured going forward. I have to be honest with you and say that it would be very easy for us to be able to tabulate what has been done under the initiative by being able to tell you about the number of reports that have been published and the number of meetings we've had and the number of interactions we faced, but that doesn't get at the actual outcome around the initiative.

As I said, it's day seven for me, so one of the things that's on my agenda is being able to speak with my colleagues and be able to determine what the best approach is with respect to evaluating where we've come to date. Is it the appropriate time now to be evaluating that? Or is there value in being able to wait until the full effects of some of the federal initiatives have gone forward? Then, prescriptively—in other words, not just five years from now, but say within 12 to 24 months—we'll be able to better assess the value of the initiatives and how those tools are being used. That's what I would like to get at. So those discussions will be forthcoming.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Okay, thank you very much.

We have our last question, and that would go to Ms. Freeman.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you very much for coming.

I'm going to be rather brief. You mentioned that reliable information on elder abuse was limited because data is under-reported and that most of the problem is that professionals aren't necessarily reporting it. Now, I understand that's probably the majority of the problem, but are there other systemic problems? Is there anything else the government could do in terms of going in to get more accurate numbers?

[Marla Israel]

A great question, and thank you so much for it.

Right now I should elaborate on that, because you're quite right that it does start with the professionals being able to report not only that incidents of abuse have been reported and either the police have been involved or others. A person has presented with signs of abuse and as a medical professional I'm recording that as part of my notes and I've referred this individual to social services, etc.

So part of the challenge with respect to an issue like this is first you need to raise attention, then you need to get the guidance out so that people understand the kinds of questions they need to be asking, and then that's followed with being able to make the determination and record it.

I would say we're in the process of working with provinces and territories and with other professionals to be able to, on the surveillance front, ensure better surveillance of these issues. Because it's not a Statistics Canada responsibility; it's a combined responsibility of being able to recognize the signs and then report on those signs.

I would say that's really where the core of the work is focused, an effort to be able to draw attention through those clinical practice guidelines in ways that physicians will then be more apt to report it.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Just based on the federal elder abuse awareness initiative, one of the recommendations was that the federal government work with the provinces and post-secondary institutions to encourage curriculum development. This seems to me that it would be part of awareness, but I don't know.

Do you know if there are provincial curriculums being developed, if there are provincial health providers who are implementing it, or is there any kind of work being done here?

[Marla Israel]

On that specifically, I don't know offhand. We would have to go individually by province and territory to be able to ascertain what kinds of tools within the curriculum are being developed. That really would be within the responsibility of education ministers, so I'm not familiar with that personally.

I can say that one of the tools we did develop in the Public Health Agency was directed at younger people--grade six students--so that, for themselves.... This gets back to Ms. Sgro's question with regard to the impact of health promotion at younger ages, of being able to reach populations of youth at younger ages so that they know that kind of behaviour in older life is not acceptable, and of having the conversations with parents. Kids are very astute. Kids, if they sense that something's not right, have a tendency to speak up.

This is part of the tool we've tried to develop to reach those populations of youth through their communities to be able to bring greater attention to the issue.

[Cathy Bennett]

If I could just add quickly, the program you're referring to, Across the Generations, was actually a Government of Manitoba health department tool they had developed a number of years ago. In collaboration, through the federal elder abuse initiative, we looked to make that a national resource--to update the components of it, to update the information, to bring in more partners, and to turn it into a nationally adapted document, which we have done.

That is out and available, and it is being used.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

So that has happened?

[Cathy Bennett]

Yes, that has happened.

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Okay. That's good.

You seem to have done a lot of great work with your awareness campaign. Obviously the effects are yet to be measured, but perhaps you could speak to any other ways that we could address upstream causes, based on having done the work.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

You have thirty seconds.

[Marla Israel]

As with many other issues in the health sector, it's not solely a health issue, as you can appreciate. I would say that with the efforts of the federal government, or at least at the federal level, and in consultation with the provinces and territories, to the extent that we can improve, as I said, the guidance and the recording of statistics, that is when society starts to take note of the depth of the problem.

I do feel that having the RCMP at the table, having others at the table, and being able to be aware of the signs are the best upstream measures we can take to bring attention before abuse happens. These are the tools that are necessary for an individual to use different means to communicate intent as opposed to the physical violence.

I didn't have a chance to talk to the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence, but that's how the elder abuse initiative and the federal clearinghouse work together, on the upstream measures.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Great, thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Ms. Israel and Ms. Bennett, for joining us here today and for all of your answers and also the work you're doing.

That brings our discussion to an end. Unless there are any further comments, that's the end of the work we have to do and we can wrap up the meeting.

We'll see you on Thursday.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

You can use the gavel here.

[The Chair, NDP, Niki Ashton]

Yes, I have one, but I like alternate modes.

Thank you.