Wednesday April 12, 2023
Eastern Health proudly hosted Attorney General Hon. Mark Dreyfus KC who joined us along with the Eastern Community Legal Centre (ECLC) and Oonah Health & Community Services Aboriginal Corporation to launch Evaluation Reports from two significant Elder Abuse response programs.
The report presents the findings of the evaluation of the first three years of ECLC’s elder abuse service trials – a specialist elder abuse unit, Rights of Seniors in the East (ROSE), and a health justice partnership, Engaging and Living Safely and Autonomously (ELSA).
ELSA and ROSE were funded by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department as part of the National Elder Abuse Service Trials, and have both since converted to ongoing programs.
ELSA is a health justice partnership with Eastern Health, whilst ROSE operates in partnership with Oonah Health & Community Services Aboriginal Corporation.
The two programs have been shown to be very effective at addressing and responding to elder abuse in roughly half of cases. Where they were not able to resolve the abuse or other issues, this was due to system gaps, failures in the broader health and welfare systems, and/or clients not being able to take up advice due to the complexity of their experience.
Eastern Health CEO David Plunkett congratulated the ECLC for their leadership in tackling elder abuse and thanked them for the partnership which has had a positive impact on the Eastern Health community and beyond.
“Our staff have benefited from the relationships established with the ECLC practitioners, with older people having opportunities to easily and safely access Health Justice Partnership services for specialist elder abuse advocacy, social support, financial and legal/non legal responses,” he said.
ELSA and ROSE provide an elder abuse response service in Melbourne’s East, using an integrated practice model of legal advice and casework, financial counselling and advocacy.
The programs also provide secondary consultations and advice to health and welfare professionals and community education.
The reports can be found here.