“I yell at her because she’s stupid,” a son said of his mom. A nurse saw a red flag — and saved a woman from a pattern of abuse.
The story came up around a conference table as New Haven-area nurses gathered for a workshop on how to detect and report signs of elder abuse. The workshop, held at Family Care Visiting Nurse at 419 Whalley Ave., was part of a new abuse prevention effort by the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield.
“You guys are the front line, so you can really help us,” Laura Snow told a room of 10 nurses who work with patients in their homes. Snow is coordinator of the Center for Elder Abuse Prevention, a crisis shelter for older adults run by the Jewish Home. As the state’s senior population shifts from institutions to home care, she is spearheading an effort to raise awareness about a type of abuse that is pervasive and rarely spoken of.
Last year in Connecticut, a total 3,242 cases of abuse were reported for seniors 60 and over, according to the state office of Protective Services for the Elderly. Abuse and neglect has gained headlines when it happens at nursing homes: Such cases at the Haven Home Care facilities spurred statewide reaction last year. But abuse also happens at home, Snow warned.
Escape
Snow’s shelter got a call over the past year from Protective Services, a branch of the state Department of Social Services. A woman had just been found in her Bridgeport home, where she was living with an adult son who was supposed to be taking care of her.
That night, the son yelled so loud that the neighbors called police. Police showed up to find the woman covered in feces, in a home that had spiraled out of control. Dog feces were scattered across the house. The woman was severely dehydrated. She suffered from a urinary tract infection that had gone untreated. They took her to the ER.
It turned out her caretaker, an adult son, suffered from a mental illness. He didn’t work. He had been skimping on money and meals to try to manage a frugal home. He didn’t neglect his mom out of malice, Snow said — but he left her health in danger.
In the ER, as the woman was getting hydrated in a hospital bed, the son marched in with paperwork seeking power of attorney. Someone stepped in to intervene, protecting the woman, who suffers from dementia.
The woman was just the type of person the Center for Elder Abuse Prevention was set up to help when it opened last September. Folks at the crisis shelter took her in, found her a conservator, and fed her.
“They feed me three meals!” the woman said, beaming and repeating the comment her whole first week at the shelter. “She wasn’t saying how great the food was,” said Snow, “she was saying, they feed me three meals.” The woman gained 10 pounds her first week at the shelter, largely in water weight, Snow said.
That woman is now transferred to a long-term care facility. She was one of six patients taken in during the first year of the Jewish Home’s new crisis shelter. The second of its kind in the nation, the Center for Elder Abuse Prevention was launched with the help of a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
“Call Protective Services”
In addition to sheltering abuse victims and offering case management services to those in crisis, the center has been reaching out to health professionals across the state to raise awareness about elder abuse.
Karen Mudre (pictured), a social worker with the Jewish Home, led the workshop last Thursday with concrete tips on how to detect emotional, verbal, physical, sexual and financial abuse.
(Click here for an FAQ on the signs and symptoms of abuse; click here for one on risk factors.)
Symptoms include bite marks, bruising on both sides of the body, bite marks and hair loss.
“Hair loss?” asked one nurse. “With my mother, it’s hereditary. I take very good care of her, trust me, but she’s losing her hair.”
“Call Protective Services!” joked another nurse. Laughter broke out in the room. Mudre said hair loss can be a sign that someone has had their hair pulled out in a fight, or is suffering from anxiety. But she agreed hair loss isn’t always a sign of abuse.
In a Woodbridge Immaculate Home
Another nurse, Ruthanne Crocetto (pictured), told of a situation they encountered a world away from Bridgeport, at a million-dollar mansion in Woodbridge. The woman was a widow of a rich man. Her son, a well-known attorney, had moved in with her. “He trashed this Woodbridge immaculate home,” said Crocetto. He was hoarding food and restricting her finances, yelling at her for spending money on repairing the roof. When a younger nurse showed up to care for the woman, the man yelled at her to get off the property.
Another time, she noticed bruises. The woman covered for her son, saying the bruises were an accident. The nurses, who are mandatory reporters in the state of Connecticut, didn’t buy the story. They called Protective Services to report the situation. They weren’t sure what ended up happening to the woman, because they stopped working there after that incident.
After the workshop, Crocetto said she was ready to sniff out elder abuse, as well any cover-up story that may come her way. A veteran nurse with years of experience at St. Raphael’s Hospital, Crocetto said she’s learned to tell when someone’s being hurt, and when someone’s telling a fib. As a supervisor at Family Care, she often goes out with younger nurses if they feel uncomfortable with a patient’s situation.
“If there’s something funny, I know what to do,” said Crocetto. “I’ll put on my FBI hat and go out to the home.”