Stop Elder Abuse in Assisted Living Facilities by Getting to Know the Caregivers

I'm here with Margie Veis, the Executive Director of Summerhill Villa, an assisted living facility in Santa Clarita, California.

KH: We hear stories about elder abuse and things like that. How can families insure that won't happen?

MV:: Truthfully, I think that fear is always going to be in the back of people's minds.

Same thing as when you drop your child off at preschool. You're trusting strangers to take care of your loved one, so I think you need to be in tune and pay attention to your parent. Obviously, if someone has dementia and they say things you have to take it at face value, but I don't ever poo poo anything. I hate to believe it would ever happen, but I also would never stick my head in the sand and say it never would.

I think, again, getting to know who are the caregivers, getting to know the administrator, getting to know the nurses. Not that you have to be best friends with them but you can really get a feeling. Also, look at your parent and see how they are interacting. If every time a certain care giver walks by your parent they flinch, or it just doesn't feel right, you need to say something.

I don't think anyone could ever tell me it would never happen here because you can never say never. There are bad people and we do everything that we can, not to have them in our building.

KH: The residents could cause the problem. It's not necessarily your own people.

MV: That is true. It could be a resident. It could be a family member, it could be a visitor. I have to be in tune to family members with their parents. There are family members that take advantage financially, and there are family members that are verbally abusive. That's elder abuse. It's not only hitting someone, it's taking their money, it's using their money to buy personal things for you. It's calling your parents stupid, it's threatening them with things like "You know mom if you don't do this I'm not going to pay your bill. You're going to end up out in the street." It's physical. It's emotional. It's neglect. It's isolating. It's a broad spectrum of issues, and we have to be in tune to things like that. We do abuse reporting and those types of things with our staff because we're mandatory reporters.