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:
Created by Euphemia Gannon
Created by Euphemia Gannon
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
