Methodological Challenges and the Search for Innovative Solutions in Detecting and Addressing Elder Abuse and Neglect

The project FEANCI: "The EAN phenomenon (abuse, neglect and maltreatment of the older persons) in the context of social services in the Czech Republic: innovations in detection, prevention and care" is a search for answers to the current and expected challenges inherent in the process of demographic and social changes in society, especially the increase in the proportion and number of older people. The abuse and neglect of older persons is a complex problem, straddling the line between individual suffering and societal trauma, affecting fundamental human rights. It contains both a reflection of the biologically determined changes in older age that increase the fragility of older victims (or persons "at risk") and the (in)functionality of (early) detection mechanisms and support systems to deal with these incidents. The project is interdisciplinary, using sociological, socio-political and anthropological-ethnographic paradigms with overlaps into the field of gender studies, it brings innovative ways of remediating this problem by recognizing the hierarchical sets of causes of these phenomena, and finding innovative ways of incident detection and care for victims and for (potentially) violent persons. In this presentation we mainly concentrate on methodological aspect of the measurement of prevalence of EAN within institutional settings and debate the shortcomings of available methods. We use the FEANCI survey and expert interviews to illustrate these challenges and point to possible remedies.

The FEANCI project is supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TA CR) grant No. TQ01000510.