Effectiveness of a Joint Police and Social Services Response to Elder Abuse in Manhattan [New York City], New York, 1996-1997

This project consisted of an evaluation of an elder abuse
 program run by the New York Police Department and Victim Services
 Research. The focus of the study was domestic elder abuse, which
 generally refers to any of several forms of maltreatment, physical
 abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, neglect, and/or financial
 exploitation of an older person. The program, conducted in New York
 City public housing, had two complementary parts. First, public
 housing projects in Manhattan were assigned to one of two levels of
 public education (i.e., to receive or not to receive educational
 materials about elder abuse). Once the public education treatment had
 been implemented, 403 older adult residents of the housing projects
 who reported elder abuse to the police during the next ten months were
 assigned to one of two levels of follow-up to the initial police
 response (i.e., to receive or not to receive a home visit) as the
 second part of the project. The home visit intervention consisted of a
 strong law enforcement response designed to prevent repeat incidents
 of elder abuse. A team from the Domestic Violence Intervention and
 Education Program (DVIEP), consisting of a police officer and a social
 worker, followed up on domestic violence complaints with a home visit
 within a few days of the initial patrol response. Victims were
 interviewed about new victimizations following the intervention on
 three occasions: six weeks after the trigger incident, six months
 after the trigger incident, and twelve months after the trigger
 incident. Interviews at the three time points were identical except
 for the omission of background information on the second and third
 interviews. Demographic data collected during the first interview
 included age, gender, ethnicity, education, employment, income, legal
 relationship with abuser, living situation, number of people in the
 household, and health. For each time point, data provide measures of
 physical, psychological, and financial abuse, knowledge of elder
 abuse, knowledge and use of social services, satisfaction with the
 police, assessment of service delivery, and self-esteem and
 well-being. The DVIEP databases maintained on households at each of
 the three participating Police Service Areas (PSAs) were searched to
 identify new police reports of elder abuse for households in the
 sample within 12 months following the trigger incident. Variables from
 the DVIEP databases include age, race, ethnicity, and sex of the
 victim and the perpetrator, relationship of perpetrator to victim,
 type of abuse reported, charge, whether an arrest was made, if an
 order of protection had been obtained, if the order of protection was
 violated, use of weapons, if the victim had been injured, and if the
 victim was taken to the hospital. Several time lapse variables between
different time points are also provided.

Tags: abuse, crime-reporting, domestic-violence, elder-abuse, households, intervention, older-adults, police-response, program-evaluation, victim-services, victimization, victims
Organization: Department of Justice