Areas of Interest
Caregiving and elder abuse
The early research on elder abuse suggested a direct link between elders’ need
for care and elder abuse. More recent studies and practitioners’ experiences
suggest that the relationship between caregiving and abuse is much more complex,
reflecting the quality of relationships between caregivers and those they care
for, interactions between them, and histories of conflict and domestic violence.
Clearly, competing demands on family caregivers, societal pressures to serve
increasingly frail seniors at home, and a critical shortage of affordable
home care workers has created an environment that is ripe for conflict, neglect,
and exploitation. These stressors are particularly pronounced within cultural
communities where poverty, multiple-generation caregiving, and higher rates
of disability play a role. Elders who lack family caregivers and sufficient
resources to hire trustworthy workers face even greater risks. Examples
of Nerenberg’s
activities in this area include:
- Technical advisor for Ensuring A Qualified Long-Term Care Workforce:
From Pre-Employment Screens To On-The-Job Monitoring, a project of the Office
of the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), Department of Health and Human
Services.
Publications
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