Domestic violence

What happens when family caregivers experience violence and abuse from the older person for whom they care? Although this issue has received little global attention, it is relevant to researchers, practitioners, and policy makers working across the intersecting fields of older age care and medicine, adult protection and safeguarding, and domestic and intimate partner violence. To date, these fields have generated diverse explanations of violence and abuse in older age illness and how best to respond to it.

With a landmark study under way on domestic violence among older people, the author investigates abuse that has long been overlooked. 

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of an empirically based theoretical model of abuse of women with physical disabilities. The Abuse Pathways model was developed from a critical disability life history research study conducted with 37 women who had simultaneously experienced abuse and physical disability. The model begins to address the complexity of abuse of women with physical disabilities by identifying the interactive components of the phenomenon.

Provides a commentary on research outcomes in the field of elder abuse and challenges assumptions about older people, carers, vulnerability and risk.

This study was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and King’s College London and commissioned and co-funded by Comic Relief and the Department of Health. It presents findings of in-depth interviews with a selection of older people who have experienced abuse and mistreatment.