The National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA) is a national resource for elder rights, law enforcement and legal professionals, public policy leaders, researchers, and the public. The Center’s mission is to promote understanding, knowledge sharing, and action on elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
The NCEA is administered under the auspices of the National Association of State Units on Aging.
February 11, 2009 at 11:08 am
Please inform me the best department/organizaation to help explain to my husband and I that with all the organizations there are against elder abuse/neglect and exploitation, how we could get absolutely no help or guidance for the injustice that was done to my father-in-law over the course of a year?
He was financially exploited by his “friend” and her son, the state did virtually nothing. Then his daughter took advantage of him and then done everything she could to prevent my husband and their older brother from getting any medical info on their dad. She put him in a nursing home and led him to believe that he was only in for rehab and didn’t tell either of her brothers where she put him. Then she went behind their back and filed for guardianship and the court gave her temp guardianship which expired Dec 30 but the nursing home and hospitals act like she still has guardianship and deny the boys medical info about their dad. We’ve told them the sister doesn’t share the info but to no avail. We hired a lawyer ($3000.00 retainer) again to no avail. It took him a month just to get the rebuttle and our petition filed and in the intrim, the nursing home gave the father so much haldol for over a week that all he could do most of the time we were there to visit was set there with his eyes closed and hold out his hand to feel who/what was around him. I filed a complaint with the state and the next thing we know, the nursing home sends him to the phsyciatric ward at the hospital and then told the hospital that they were not taking him back. My husband and I wanted to bring him home with us and care for him here but the daughter, her lawyer and the state provided lawyer kept calling the hospital and harrasing or threatening or something because the hospital was going to let us take him when they released him but then decided that since the daughter had had temp guardianship that they were going to release him back to her and we’d just have to settle it in court. She has no more right than either of her brothers, how can this happen????? She is only going to take him and place him into another nursing home. She doesn’t want to take care of him but won’t let us do it either because she is mad. How does an injustice such as this happen? We tried to do all the right things and take all the right steps and received no help or information from anyone. We were trying to help him and do what was best for him. I could understand if we were the abusers or neglected him but that’s not the case. WHAT WENT WRONG???????