Elder Abuse Assessment Tools and Interventions for use in the Home Environment: a Scoping Review.

Background and Aim: Caregivers in the home environment have an important role in timely detecting and responding to abuse. The aim of this review was to provide insight into both the existing tools for the assessment of and interventions for elder abuse by formal and informal caregivers in the home environment, and to categorize them according to a public health perspective, into primary, secondary, tertiary or quaternary prevention.
Methods: We selected the assessment tools and interventions that can be used by caregivers in the home environment included in previous reviews by Gallione et al (2017) and Fearing et al (2017). To identify published studies after these reviews, a search was performed using PubMed, Cochrane Database, CINAHL and Web of Science.
Results: In total, fifteen assessment tools and twelve interventions were included. The number of assessment tools for elder abuse for use in the home environment is increasing; however, tools must be validated over different cultures and risk groups. In addition, the tools lack attention for the needs of vulnerable older persons such as persons with dementia. Existing interventions for caregivers in the home environment lack evidence for addressing elder abuse and do not address potential adverse effects (quaternary prevention).
Conclusion: Assessment tools for elder abuse need further testing for validity and reliability for use by caregivers in the home environment. For interventions, meaningful outcome measures are needed. Important to note is that quaternary prevention requires more attention. This argues for taking into account perspectives of (abused) older persons and caregivers in the development of assessment tools and interventions protocols.
Competing Interests: Liesbeth De Donder reports the following as it might give an appearance of potential influence: the paper/literature review has found fifteen assessment tools that met our inclusion criteria of which four were not included in the systematic review by Gallione et al. These four instruments are discussed and one of these four is the Risk on Elder Abuse and Mistreatment Instrument (REAMI) of which I am the developer/first author of the validation paper (De Donder et al, 2018). The authors report no other potential conflicts of interest in this work.
(© 2020 Van Royen et al.)