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.