Training to Identify and Support Older Victims of Abuse

The project focused on training professionals, volunteers and elderly people to identify and provide assistance to elderly victims of abuse. Some research estimates that as much as 1/4 of older women experience neglect, physical, sexual, psychological, and/or financial abuse by someone close to them. Studies have found that older women who experienced abuse have greater psychiatric distress such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, panic attacks, anxiety, anger, feelings of powerlessness, fatigue and confusion. Older women face greater risks for abuse than men due to discriminatory social attitudes, but skills and expertise needed to identify elderly female victims of violence and improve their situation are not well-developed due to absence of specific awareness-raising educational programs. This project focused on improving the situation by achieving some objectives such as:- designing an interactive training program (training handbook/curriculum and online materials (MOOC) for active and innovative learning opportunities to educate key groups on a topic of violence against older people;- strengthening the capacity of those who work with the elderly, such as professionals from senior centers (and volunteers), to respond to the specific needs of older women victims through multiple trainings and online learning;- contributing to a better understanding of the experiences and needs of elderly (female) victims of domestic violence and empowered them to seek assistance to take other action to break the cycle of violence through trainings/interventions with elderly people and engaging them into focus groups and other project activities;- contributing to stakeholders’ implementation of elder abuse policy into practice, especially in relation to gender specific issues, through training them, providing comprehensive training materials and online course. To achieve these objectives, the project targeted all 3 subgroups (professionals, volunteers and elderly people) and involved them in the project activities on a continuous basis – in assessing the needs and gaps in the field and producing an analytical report, in production and piloting of the training curriculum and training programme, and in development of the online materials for MOOC. With this, different needs and abilities of these groups were identified, recognized and addressed with different learning approaches. It is estimated that 993 people from our key target audiences were directly affected by the end of the project. The participants were professionals or volunteers working in social care, eldercare facilities, senior houses, or in related fields such as healthcare or shelters. A solid part of participants were also elderly people themselves (including many persons with disabilities or health issues), mostly residents of senior houses or eldercare facilities or using the services of our associated partners. The project has undertaken a number of activities in order to develop the training materials and engage the target audiences. An analytical report was developed to summarize the experiences of abuse of older women in partner countries, including results of the focus groups with elderly and interviews with professionals. Based on the findings of this report, policy recommendations were drafted, and a training curriculum was developed with the aim to train professionals and volunteers to identify elderly abuse and to support victims, as well as to empower elderly people to stand up and act once facing violence or identifying abuse in their surroundings. This training curriculum was tested through multiple pilots and trainings with all key target groups, and has been finalized as a training handbook, which in turn was adapted into online format. A MOOC was produced based on the training materials, piloted three times and awarded for its outstanding quality.Concrete results and achievements of the project include producing an analytical report on Abuse of Older Women in Selected European Countries (IO1), developing a training handbook/curriculum in 5 languages (IO2), designing an evaluation plan and evaluation templates for all activities, producing guidelines on how to use TISOVA materials, MOOC available in 5 languages and launched 3 times in English, Estonian, and Russian (IO3), pilots and trainings which engaged significantly more people than envisioned, as well as multiplier events with big outreach and project website with all deliverables available in free access.Elderly victims of violence are mostly “invisible” and do not appear in statistics nor reports. In addition to materials produced, TISOVA project also raised the topic of elder abuse publicly through social media, articles in newspapers, with the dissemination events in partner countries and the final conference in Estonia. Awareness raising among the relevant stakeholders is the key component in identifying and recognizing the elderly victims of violence.