The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry, which found ver­bal abuse of an in­mate at one geri­atric home, re­ferred the mat­ter to the po­lice, and al­so re­ferred three oth­er mat­ters at pri­vate res­i­dences to po­lice over 2017-2018.

Min­is­ter Cher­rie Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn de­tailed the find­ings in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries about a six month pe­ri­od over Oc­to­ber 2017 to March 2018 when com­plaints of el­der abuse were re­ceived.

She said the min­istry re­ceived 72 re­ports of cas­es of el­der abuse in that time—30 cas­es al­leged­ly oc­cur­ring at geri­atric homes and 42 at pri­vate res­i­dences—and four mat­ters were re­ferred to the po­lice.

Up­on re­ceipt of such re­ports, she said, the Min­istry’s Di­vi­sion of Ag­ing (DOA) con­ducts unan­nounced vis­its and in­spec­tions at geri­atric homes and pri­vate res­i­dences.

“Unan­nounced in­spec­tions were con­duct­ed at 30 homes. Dur­ing our in­ves­ti­ga­tions we were ei­ther un­able to sub­stan­ti­ate al­le­ga­tions of abuse or found no ev­i­dence of abuse at 27 of the homes,” she added.

“We, how­ev­er, iden­ti­fied in­stances of non -com­pli­ance with es­tab­lished stan­dards in the ar­eas of safe­ty, en­vi­ron­ment, staffing, poli­cies/pro­ce­dures and record keep­ing. The homes were re­quired to sign com­pli­ance agree­ments that ad­dressed their re­spec­tive de­fi­cien­cies with­in an agreed time frame and are be­ing mon­i­tored by the DOA. In ad­di­tion, 12 homes were re­ferred to the Health Min­istry for reg­is­tra­tion and nine for ur­gent/ im­me­di­ate ac­tion,”

Crichlow -Cock­burn said ver­bal abuse was found at one home—re­ferred to po­lice—and “ poor, in­hu­mane and/or un­safe” con­di­tions at two oth­er homes.

The lat­ter re­sult­ed in the de­cant­i­ng and re­lo­ca­tion of all res­i­dents. Own­ers of these homes were al­so re­ferred to the Health Min­istry.

The homes from which peo­ple were re­moved did not re­ceive gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tion.

The 42 pri­vate homes were al­so vis­it­ed by DOA in­spec­tors, ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice where nec­es­sary.

“Twen­ty-one of the re­ports could not be sub­stan­ti­at­ed or con­firmed. How­ev­er, four of the al­leged vic­tims were re­ferred for psy­choso­cial sup­port in­clud­ing coun­selling and two to the So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion for as­sis­tance,” she said.

Crichlow-Cock­burn, how­ev­er, said 21 in­stances of abuse were con­firmed in the pri­vate homes, “Four vic­tims were re­lo­cat­ed to re­side with rel­a­tives and nine oth­ers to geri­atric homes. In five in­stances care­givers were re­moved and three mat­ters were re­ferred to the po­lice.”

The min­istry was not aware if mat­ters were sent for­ward by po­lice to pros­e­cu­tion since the Min­istry’s work stops at re­fer­ring mat­ters to the po­lice, she added.

Crichlow-Cock­burn said DOA in­spec­tors in­tend do­ing ran­dom vis­its to homes at least once an­nu­al­ly