The Gray Panthers: Attacking Elder Abuse

In 1981 the Gray Panthers of Austin, Texas began working on the problem of elder abuse. With few funds and strictly volunteer workers, the Panthers lobbied successfully for legislation, spread the word about available services, and conducted a landmark survey documenting elder abuse in Texas. Their work is a model of effectiveness in tapping community resources, in coalition-building, and in breaking the barriers that segregate young and old. The Panthers' first step was to learn as much as possible about the problem. Austin chapter convener Charlotte Flynn, 65, explains:

"We invited a panel composed of people we felt came in contact with older persons — a police officer, a lawyer, a social worker from Meals on Wheels, a representative of one of the state social service agencies, a nurse, and a counselor from the battered women's center — to discuss their firsthand knowledge of elder abuse. The information brought out by the panel prompted us to form a task force on elder abuse, made up of some panel members and Gray Panthers."

The task force, chaired by Gray Panther Hank Lieberman, 67, sought ways to address the issue effectively. Meanwhile Flynn testified on behalf of legislation authorizing protective services for the elderly. The Panthers — who oppose isolating problems, solutions, or people on the basis of age — wanted the scope of the bill expanded to include protective services for all adults, but there wasn't time to muster the needed support within the legislature. Flynn's strategy, then, was to back the proposed bill and work toward expansion during the next legislative session. Even that approach was threatened, however, when the bill became the battleground for a territorial struggle between the state's Department of Human Resources (DHR) and a newly created Department on Aging (DoA). 

"I had a real surprise when the bill was read at the committee hearing, and it put protective services in the Department on Aging. They didn't read the bill until the last minute, and one of the representatives got up and suggested that people not testify because they were running so late. I asked for an exception, because I had worked with a couple of other bills and the same thing had happened. The comment is, 'Well, you can give your testimony at the subcommittee hearing.' Well, what they usually do is, on the floor of the House at one point or another they convene the subcommittee and hash through the bill, and people that were going to have input never know about it."

Flynn's testimony helped to kill that version of the bill in committee. A companion bill more to her liking made it through the Senate, but ran into trouble in conference committee.

"One really powerful representative on the conference committee hates the Department of Human Resources, and thanks to him the bill passed without any fiscal funding. And the compromise was that protective services for the elderly would be housed in DHR for two years and then it would revert to DoA. It was a real fiasco."

The new law required people to report all incidences of elder abuse, and gave DHR authority to investigate and to authorize protective services. But since DHR had to rely on existing staff and funds, and would be responsible only for two years, the agency was reluctant to publicize the program. This led the task force to its first major activity: its members produced a one-page pamphlet describing elder abuse, the new law, and the steps to take in reporting abuse.

"We distributed about 45,000 copies. We did it through different meetings and conventions, like the Texas Hospital Association and the NAACP, and we sent copies to different groups who announced it in their newsletters. From all over the state we had requests for the brochure. I had a letter from a woman in East Texas who had been abused. She sent me two dollars because she was going to help distribute more to other people in her community who didn't know about it."

Then Flynn and the task force planned their strategy for the next legislative sessions. Their goals were to keep protective services for the elderly housed in DHR, to secure funding for the program, and, if possible, to expand the legislative mandate to include all adults. They decided that a key factor in getting the attention of legislators was documenting the existence of the problem. Task force member Kathy Strong, 37, explains, "Lots of people were still thinking that elder abuse is something exceedingly rare, something that only occurs in the slums of Houston, and not in my town or my family." According to Flynn: 

"The group quickly found there was no statewide or even local documentation about the extent, types, or causes of elder abuse. So Hank [Lieberman], the chair of the task force, decided that the thing to do would be to do a survey, get some hard data. And then Hank left town. So I just sort of bulldogged it through and got it done."

Flynn met with Ira Iscoe, 64, director of the Institute of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Texas. Iscoe agreed to help and talked to the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health about funding assistance.

"Ira told them that we had to have hard data by January to present to the legislature. Knowing we had to move quickly, the people at Hogg told him, if you can keep your request under a thousand dollars, a letter will do. So we drafted a letter and requested $950 to do the survey. 

"The task force members drafted the survey questions. They kept it to one page — no essay questions, it was all check-off. We figured that for $950 we could end up sending out 1,500 copies. We knew we wanted to send it to people who came into contact with the elderly. So we sent to all the hospital social workers. We sent to all the home health agencies. We went to the Department of Health and pulled out all their regional nurses. When we got to physicians, we finally ended up with a random sample of family practitioners. (The Texas Medical Association charged us for that mailing list; other people gave us theirs.) We also sent to sheriffs and police departments and justices of the peace. 

"We deliberately left out DHR because we wanted to go to the legislature with our findings. We wanted them to see we were doing this independently. 

"We got a good return, 33.6 percent of the number sent out. Then when the surveys came back, two research assistants from the Institute [Jeffrey Anderson, 29, and Michael Fendrick, 27] volunteered to develop the computer program and analyze our data. A student of Dr. Iscoe's fed the information into the computer. The task force picked out what results to include, and then another student wrote the report. So we had a lot of help and technical expertise that gave the study credibility."

The survey results demonstrated that elder abuse is a problem throughout the state. All types of abuse were reported in substantial proportions. Self-neglect and exploitation were cited most often, but nearly two-thirds of the survey's respondents had encountered cases of physical abuse as well. Active neglect, the most difficult abuse to identify, was reported by 50 percent of respondents. 

"We found that elder abuse is difficult to identify. Considering what we already know from the secrecy typically surrounding domestic violence to children and spouses, we felt safe in assuming that our study speaks only of the tip of the iceberg and that there is serious under-reporting of elder abuse. 

"To many elderly, the idea of making a family crisis a public issue can be far more threatening than living with the problem. It offends their pride and displays them as vulnerable. In addition, the perpetrator may be their only remaining family or social bond. They don't want to lose that relationship, even if it is destructive — they also know the only alternative would be placement in a nursing home. 

"Also, an aged person's social contacts are so limited. Even those who come in contact with abused elderly may not recognize the signs of abuse and neglect; there is very little education or training about how to identify them."

The survey received good coverage in the state's major newspapers. Kathy Strong wrote an article that was included in the journal of the National Association of Social Workers. The Panthers also contacted other professional groups, who either mailed copies of the report to their membership or summarized the results in their newsletters, Flynn says.

"It's all sort of interesting — we're very much on a grassroots level, we're not in the academic, published area. But we've had calls from the attorney general's office in Washington to testify, and we were asked to testify at the senate hearing on family violence here in Texas. What we did was credible, and nobody else had done it. We were hoping it would act as a catalyst, and it has. 

"Kathy Strong and I were down in San Antonio recently, talking to the Western Gerontological Society, because Ira Iscoe asked us to. He is interested in showing our study as a model of an economical way of addressing problems in communities, where you have cooperation between grassroots organizations and the technology and expertise of a university to put together something, and you don't have to go out and get a $50,000 grant for it. Our study is also a good model of how younger and older people can work together. Respect for the elderly isn't going to improve until there is more intergenerational activity, people willing to work with one another. When it happens, good things come out." 

Using the survey and the publicity it had received as leverage, Flynn worked to meet the task force's legislative goals. She found that Advocacy, Inc., an Austin-based organization concerned with the rights of disabled people, was also working to expand the protective services bill. 

"I worked with individual legislators to get the protective services bill amended — to enlarge its scope, to keep it in DHR, and to get funding. I testified at the committee hearings, and I also worked with Advocacy, Inc. They've got lots of staff, and they were drafting an amendment that included the disabled. I made our concerns known to them so that when they drafted the bill, our concerns would be included. But we had to compromise on that. 

"We were asking for adult protective services, to bridge the gap between 18 and 65; but Advocacy, Inc. really wanted to focus on the disabled, and the legislature did too. It's easier to focus on a special group, because then you've limited your responsibility. Also the legislature was hesitant about adult protective services because that puts battered women in the category, and that really gets them into family issues, 'interfering' with the family, that old stuff. So, once it became clear we weren't going to get to first base with adult protective services, we began supporting Advocacy, Inc. and their push for including the disabled."

The amended bill passed; responsibility for protective services remained with DHR, and new case workers were transferred from another division within DHR to work on elder abuse cases.

"The thing that really sold it was a Legislative Budget Board study proving that DHR could do the work cheaper than the Department on Aging. I'm not sure how that happened. I wasn't smart enough to ask for it, though I certainly would next time." 

Flynn had planned to testify again in 1985 for expanded services and still greater funding, this time working with a coalition of groups focused on all forms of family violence. But the results of the November elections changed those plans. 

"The message we've been given is, don't expect to get anything; programs are going to have to be cut, not expanded. It's not going to be an easy session. We won't have the coalition of legislators that we've been able to go to. But we're going to be working with a lot of other groups: Consumers Union, the Anti-Hunger Coalition, the Texas Alliance [grassroots organizations representing poor and minority Texans in the South Texas Valley, East Texas, and urban areas], the Care Coalition for Abused Children, the Travis County Task Force on Family Violence. Somehow or another we've got to rally together so we don't let these cuts in services do what the Reagan Administration has tried so hard to do: they put out a little tiny pot of money and let everybody fight over it, and then they just wash their hands. I think somebody has to say, 'You have no business saying children are more important than the elderly, or the elderly are more important.' We're not going to get into this dog-eat-dog stuff. 

"I don't know that we can do much about getting what is needed, but we certainly can make sure that the legislators know what those needs are, and can't hide behind not knowing. 

"We're also looking at where we need to go next outside of the legislative work. After the survey was done, the task force was looking at what churches and volunteer groups could do, especially in the area of prevention. We firmly believe that the best solution resides in prevention — in support for families caring for elders, and in community-based services for older people. The whole approach of prevention is really vital, because by the time you're intervening in elder abuse, you've got a long history of family dynamics that are dysfunctional. Somehow or other, you have to intervene into the basic causes. 

"Self-neglect is another area in which you can do a lot of prevention. So often it's a matter of a basic lack of economic security. When you have an income of $300 per month, and you have to have food, and you can't afford supplemental insurance, and Medicare pays 38 percent, the depression that must set in. . . . We were very concerned in our report, when the statistic came out that self-neglect was the greatest number, that people would say, 'Well, it's their own fault.' We tried to emphasize that society bears some responsibility for solving the problem. And it's probably the easiest area to do something about. It causes the least damage in relationships. 

"No matter what the political climate is, we plan to go on working on this issue. We know that this country's population of people 60 and older is increasing at a rapid rate, and the number over age 75, the most vulnerable elderly, is increasing even more rapidly. We need to make choices now and acknowledge that unless adequate support services are given to the elderly who remain alone, or to their families who care for them, the potential for elder abuse is tremendous."

For a copy of the survey and a summary of the results, write: Gray Panthers of Austin, 7710 West Rim Drive, Austin, TX 78731.