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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Domestic abuse and older people
— factors influencing help-seeking | | Author(s) | Sarah Wydall, Rebecca Zerk |
| Journal title | Journal of Adult Protection, vol 19, no 5, 2017 |
| Publisher | Emerald, 2017 |
| Pages | pp 247-260 |
| Source | http://www.emeraldinsight.com/loi/jap |
| Keywords | Elder abuse ; Usage [services] ; Care support workers ; Attitude ; Wales. |
| Annotation | The purpose of this paper was to explore professionals' perceptions of the barriers to help-seeking for victim-survivors of domestic abuse aged 60 years and over. Help-seeking as defined by Anderson and Saunders (2003) is not a single act or decision, but a complex and continuous process that victims engage in when seeking support. As part of the study, 50 qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with statutory practitioners and managers from 21 out of 22 local authorities in Wales. The research team worked collaboratively to produce a coding scheme which was subjected to a systematic coding exercise using the software package NVivo. Professionals believed that older people's `interconnectedness' with family, social embeddedness in the community and `meanings of the home' influenced help-seeking. The research suggested that for older victim-survivors of domestic abuse, age discrimination by practitioners compounds older people's experiences of help-seeking, restricting the range, quality and type of support provided. The paper demonstrates that a significant shift is required in practice to ensure that older people are in a position to make informed choices and their wishes are central in the decision-making process. Further qualitative research is needed to explore what older people themselves believe are the factors that impact on statutory service engagement. This study is the first in the UK to conduct Pan-Wales research on professionals' views on help-seeking behaviours of older people. One of the key findings from the study is that professionals from the statutory sector feel that connections to the home and social networks strongly influence help-seeking for older victim-survivors of domestic abuse. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-171027217 A |
| Classmark | QNT: QLD: QRS: DP: 9 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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