Detecting and preventing financial abuse of older adults: Examining decision making by health, social care and banking professionals

Abstract

Financial elder abuse is gaining increasing attention from researchers and policy makers. Such abuse can include theft of money as well as misuse of assets such as property. This research applied judgement analysis methodology to explore professional decision making in the context of such abuse and to identify the nature of the cues used to detect and prevent abuse. Participants included social care, health and banking professionals, who were established as key decision makers. In Phase I, semi-structured interviews (n = 63) were conducted. The critical incident technique was used to identify cue use and decisions taken in the most recent case experienced. Key cues for both social care and health professionals included the nature of the ‘financial problem suspected’, the older persons ‘mental capacity’ and the ‘identifier of the abuse’, this being whether the abuse was directly observed or instead reported by a third party. A separate cue used by health professionals was the individual’s ‘physical capacity’. Banking professionals did not use physical or mental capacity as cues, but independently considered ‘who was in charge of the money’. Decisions made by social care professionals included determining whether safeguarding procedures should be implemented. In Phase II, a factorial survey approach was applied whereby social care, health and banking professionals (n=223) were presented with case scenarios incorporating the cues from Phase I in addition to cues from literature review. Multiple regression analysis and incremental F-tests identified the cues that explained a significant amount of the variance in judgements of certainty of abuse and likelihood of taking action. For example, for social care and health professionals this included the older person’s mental capacity, and the nature of the financial problem suspected. The findings could be used to develop a training tool to enable other professionals to improve their strategies for detection and prevention of financial elder abuse.