Today is World Elder Abuse Awareness Day which is marked every year on June 15. It was launched in 2006 by the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and the date was designated by the United Nations in 2011.

The British Columbia Securities Commission and BC’s Office of the Seniors Advocate are teaming up to highlight the importance of today  amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Education and Communication Director with the BC Securities Commission Pamela McDonald says Elder Abuse Awareness day is particularly important this year because the pandemic has forced many seniors to become more isolated, which is a key risk factor for experiencing financial abuse. “We need people to step up to protect seniors in their community from becoming victims of investment fraud.”

McDonald says the problem is magnified when someone is on a fixed income. “So it’s really important for us to do the best that we can to ensure that seniors in British Columbia know how to recognize the signs of investment fraud, to be able to reject them and of course report any possible fraud to us at the BC Securities Commission.”

BC Senior Advocate Isobel Mackenzie says it is very challenging to track instances of elder abuse. “We report from various sources what we think are reported each year and we know by the numbers we’re reporting that we’re not capturing it all.”

“Information is key and the more information you have about potential scams the more you can do to reach out and stop them and bring the fraudsters to task. And again if people are losing money, the more information we have, the sooner we get that information, the sooner that we might be able to get money back to investors. And that’s they key…. There’s so often a stigma about talking about it.”

Mackenzie says it is in the midst of drafting a report to try and improve the reporting capabilities of elder abuse.”We’re still in the information gathering phase of our report. So we’ve surveyed British Columbians to try and understand their understanding of elder abuse, their perception of how prolific it is in the province and it has confirmed what we thought that it is significantly under-reported officially.”

Mackenzie says COVID-19 has also re-prioritized the importance of this topic as right now many people are going to be looking at what’s happening and be worried about their income and be more isolated than normal and may be turning to online resources more than before. She says it is expecting to release its report in the fall.

“We recently did a survey of British Columbians to ask people ‘have you ever witnessed financial abuse?’ and about 1 in 5 people in BC say that they have witnessed financial abuse in persons over the age of 65.”

Results from the abuse and neglect survey shed light on these issues in BC:

• 17 per cent of respondents witnessed financial abuse in persons over age 65
• 76 per cent of respondents who witnessed financial abuse said the abuser was a family member
• 49 per cent of respondents who witnessed financial abuse or neglect did not report it
• 12 per cent of respondents did not report the financial abuse because they didn’t know who to report to

OSA and BCSC have combined to create a video to increase awareness about elder financial abuse, the most commonly identified type of elder abuse. You can watch the video here.