Elder Abuse Resources

A Practical Guide to Elder Abuse and Neglect Law in Canada

The Practical Guide to Elder Abuse and Neglect Law in Canada provides an overview of elder abuse and neglect law and identifies some best practices in elder abuse response. The guide includes a summary of relevant provincial, territorial, and federal legislation.

The guide includes:

  • Modules on relevant aspects of the law in each province and territory
  • A summary of key federal legislation, including the criminal law
  • 5 lenses for inclusive practice
  • 12 guiding principles for best practice
  • A section on laws that apply to Indigenous people living on reserves
  • A glossary of terms
  • Links to other CCEL elder abuse resources
  • Links to legislation on CanLII

A Practical Guide to Elder Abuse and Neglect Law in Canada

Guide pratique du droit relatif à la maltraitance et à la négligence des personnes âgées

Health Care Decision-Making: Legal Rights of People Living with Dementia

People living with dementia often find that their decision-making rights are not respected. Some people assume that if you have dementia you cannot understand information or make choices. This exclusion happens within health care institutions and also in the larger community.

This set of resources is on the decision-making rights of people living with dementia: three short animated videos, and a booklet. The booklet is available in English, French, Traditional Chinese and Punjabi.

Health Care Decision-Making: Legal Rights of People Living with Dementia

Supporting People with Disabilities to Participate in Decision-­Making: International Scan of Resources

Inclusive Investing: Respecting the Rights of Vulnerable Investors through Supported Decision Making

Over the years, the CCEL has led a number of projects on mental capacity, decision-making rights, and related barriers to access to justice faced by people living with dementia and other disabilities. The Inclusive Investing Project was developed to explore capacity and supported decision-making in the investment context. The project examines how adults living with disabilities can use supported decision-making to participate meaningfully in investment decision-making. One of the key research question it considers is: How can Canadian investment advisors, adults with cognitive and decision-making challenges, and supporters incorporate supported decision making into the investment decision-making process while guarding against undue influence and financial abuse?

The project resulted in a study paper and a suite of resources. The resources include:

  • a presentation for investment advisors,
  • a practice checklist for investment advisors,
  • a presentation for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities,
  • a booklet for people living with dementia, and
  • a booklet for people who support others with decision-making.

Making Investment Decisions With Support – A
Resource for People Living With Dementia

Helping Someone With Investment Decisions – A Resource for Family and Friends

Supporting Client Capacity for Investment Decision-Making: Promising Practices

Making Investment Decisions with Support: Rights and Strategies – Facilitator’s Checklist

Older Women’s Dialogue Project

Law and social policy reform often moves forward in a way that ignores gender. This is true of the experiences of older women, which remain remarkably invisible from aging policy analysis.

The Older Women’s Dialogue Project explored:

  1. What are the pressing law and social policy issues impacting older women?
  2. What can we do to address these barriers to quality of life for older women?

The Report We are not all the Same: Key Law, Policy and Practice Strategies for Improving the Lives of Older Women in the Lower Mainland shares consultation findings from speaking with older women from diverse communities, provides research on key barriers to well-being identified by older women, and concludes with thirty strategies for law, policy and practice reform aimed at improving quality of life for older women.

We Are Not All the Same: Key Law, Policy and Practice Strategies for Improving the Lives of Older Women
in the Lower Mainland

Engaging Older Women in your Community: A Promising Practices Guide for Women’s and Senior Serving Organizations

Be a Savvy Senior

Be a Savvy Senior is a series of educational tools to help seniors protect themselves against fraud. The tools identify some of the most common scams con artists use these days to target seniors. The focus of the tools is to empower seniors to help protect themselves by identifying basic strategies people can use to respond to suspected fraud. The tools include:

  1. A bilingual fraud prevention calendar for the year 2014—available at select seniors centres across Canada;
  2. A series of fact sheets (English and French versions); and
  3. English and French languages videos.

Elder Abuse and Neglect: What Volunteers Need to Know

What Volunteers Need to Know is an introductory elder abuse workshop. This workshop has been created for volunteers who work with older people and Boards of Directors of organizations that serve aging clients.

Resources Handout

Elder Abuse and Neglect: What Volunteers
Need to Know

Document Resources

Les mauvais traitements envers les aînés : Ce que tout bénévole doit savoir

The Counterpoint Project: Elder Abuse Resources for Health Care and Social Service Workers

The purpose of the Counterpoint Project is to help health care and social service providers negotiate the various legal and ethical challenges in elder abuse prevention and response.  The resources produced as part of the Counterpoint Project include a plain language discussion paper, guidelines for a continuum of health care providers, print tools and videos.

Financial Literacy 102 – A knowledge based approach to preventing financial abuse of older adults: a guide for professionals

BC CEAS retained the services of the CCEL to create this publication to provide professionals who work with older adults with a general overview in relation to financial abuse of older adults as well as financial literacy and financial planning for older adults.  This publication is also intended to serve as a tool for in-house teaching of staff and volunteers.

Undue Influence: Recommended Practices for Wills Practitioners

This project provides a set of recommended practices for will drafters to follow to ensure that the wills they prepare represent the genuine independent wishes of their clients and are insulated against challenge on the basis of undue influence.

Power of Attorney Use and Abuse: A guide for seniors and their attorneys

This Guide contains an overview of elder abuse and neglect law in Canada. Each province and territory has a unique set of laws that apply to elder abuse and this tool summarizes those laws, identifies obligations to respond to abuse, neglect and risk and provides other information for organizations who work with older adults on a firsthand basis.

Power of Attorney Use and Abuse: Factsheet

Power of Attorney Use and Abuse: Brochure

DEAR: Dental Elder Abuse Response

The Canadian Centre for Elder Law worked with Runnymede Dental Centre in Toronto to develop materials and training focused on preventing abuse and neglect of older people, and supporting older adults to develop advance care plans around dental care and oral health.