Table of Contents

About This Course

1. Introduction to Elder Abuse
2. The Basics of Elder Abuse
3. Substance Use and Other Risk Factors
4. Screening and Assessment
5. Intervention and Treatment
6. Preventing Elder Abuse

Supplements
Case Studies
References
Resources

Out of the Shadows
Uncovering Substance Use and Elder Abuse

Who Can Use This Course

"Out of the Shadows: Uncovering Substance Use and Elder Abuse" is an online course designed for professionals in health, mental health, and related fields. These audiences include social workers, home health workers, doctors, nurses, social service workers, and others working with older adults and their families in various settings. Family members -- parents, children, and grandparents -- also may use the course to ensure healthy aging and avoid elder abuse and neglect.

What Is Covered in This Course

This online course provides a basic introduction to elder abuse in the family and institutional settings. Although laws and responsibilities may vary among these settings, practitioners stress the importance of defining and addressing elder abuse across the spectrum -- whether at home or in a long-term care setting. (Research shows that although elder self-neglect shares common risk factors with other forms of elder abuse, additional complexities indicate an in-depth discussion of self-neglect requires separate study.)

This online course uses definitions developed by the National Elder Abuse Incidence Study, the nation's first major report examining the extent of elder abuse. These definitions are applied to abuse within the family and institutional settings.

Particular attention is given to the role of substance abuse as a risk factor for violence. The definition includes legal and illegal substances that have the ability to alter behaviors.

Throughout the modules, this course uses case studies of older adults as a teaching tool. The case studies are designed to reinforce concepts and provide a practicum, enabling the course participants to assess a situation, apply new knowledge, and practice the skills needed to understand the problem's complexity, screen clients, intervene in treatment, and/or prevent further abuse.

Quizzes at the end of the course modules allow participants to gauge learning against course objectives. The questions are based on the case studies presented and related course content. The course also includes tools to help professionals increase their screening, assessment, and intervention skills.

The Resources section includes publications, hotlines, Web sites, videos, and other materials that provide additional information on elder abuse. Listing of these resources is provided solely as a service. These listings do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services or any of its agencies or employees. We are not responsible for the content of any "off-site" Web pages referenced from this service.

The tools provided in this tutorial are ones that are free to the public or whose authors have given copyright permission. The mention of commercially available products or Web sites in this course does not reflect endorsement by CSAP and is included for informational purposes only.

CEU Information

Continuing Education Units (CEUs) will be offered for successful completion of this course from the following organizations:(PENDING APPROVAL)

• National Association of Social Workers (4 CH)
• National Commission of Health Education Credentialing, Inc. (4 CECH)
• The National Board for Certified Counselors (6 CH)

Acknowledgments

The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention gratefully acknowledges the cooperation and expertise of Sara Aravanis, Director of the National Center on Elder Abuse; Georgia Anetzberger, Ph.D., A.C.S.W., Li.S.W., Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University and faculty at Cleveland State University; and Bonnie Brandl, M.S.W., Project Director for the National Clearinghouse on Abuse in Later Life and board member of the National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and the National Association of Adult Protective Services Administrators. All were instrumental in the content development and review of this course.

About the Photographs

The photographs seen in the course are the courtesy of the National Center on Elder Abuse, San Francisco Consortium for Elder Abuse Prevention, and the U.S. Administration on Aging's "Images of the Aging: Aging Magazine." They are used solely as a visual aid to put a human face to the problems of elder abuse/neglect and substance use. These pictures are dramatizations rather than actual incidents of abuse.