Seniors Rights Victoria collects a lot of data about who calls our helpline and why, as well as how many data about the advice we give and the cases we support. We reviewed our helpline data over the final six months (July-December) of 2021 and compared the data to the same six months the previous year.
Here are the results:
Highlights
- Seniors Rights Victoria’s helpline receives around 275 calls per month
- 73% of older people who call are women
- 37% of calls were from an older person
- 35% of calls were from family of an older person
- 21% of calls were from a professional
- 9% of calls were from a friend of concerned other and
- 1% were ‘other’ or unknown
- 61% of calls related to elder abuse
- 39% of calls were unrelated to elder abuse
- Most calls in both 2020 and 2021 were about emotional/ psychological abuse and/or financial abuse
- 36% of the instances of elder abuse were perpetrated by a son and 27% by a daughter
- In the six-month period SRV gave 132 legal advice services and 131 non-legal advice services
- In that time we worked on 39 legal cases ad 46 non-legal cases
- 76 cases were already open in the period
- 46 cases were closed
- Many of the instances of elder abuse had been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Reasons ranged from social isolation, delays with VCAT and other service provisions, loss of income and loss of employment of the perpetrator
The helpline is currently being reviewed.