Note from the Editors: This issue of the Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect is dedicated to the challenges surrounding Adult Protective Services research and practice. It is fitting, therefore, that we open with the following memorial tribute to Dr. Mary Cay Sengstock composed by her colleague, collaborator, and friend, Dr. Melanie Hwalek. Dr. Sengstock’s contributions to the practice of Adult Protective Services and elder abuse identification have been invaluable.
Karen Stein, Editor-in-Chief
Sharon Merriman-Nai, Associate Editor
On May 8, 2014, the world of Adult Protective Services lost a tireless scholar, advocate, and teacher with the passing of Dr. Mary Cay Sengstock. Although perhaps best recognized for her development of the Sengstock-Hwalek Comprehensive Index of Elder Abuse and the Hwalek-Sengstock Elder Abuse Screening Test, Dr. Sengstock’s tireless efforts to right the social injustices of elder abuse victims manifested themselves in a wide array of venues, from the scholarship of her sociological writings, to her professional teaching and training, to her chastising of policy makers for neglecting our most vulnerable citizens.
Dr. Sengstock was an active member of the Wayne State University sociology department for 48 years, beginning in 1966 and ending the day she died. She earned her M.A. at the University of Michigan and her PhD at Washington University–St. Louis. She was an applied sociologist, certified social worker, and clinical sociologist.
One truth about Dr. Sengstock is that when she took on an issue, she jumped in with both feet. Dr. Sengstock’s scholarly work in elder abuse began in 1982 after being awarded a grant from the Administration on Aging to develop an index of elder abuse. This work resulted in the creation of the Comprehensive Index, a training manual for its use, and the Elder Abuse Screening Test. Dr. Sengstock catapulted this research into numerous related studies, publications, and book chapters on screening for elder abuse, assessing and managing elder abuse, identifying elder abuse in institutional settings, assessing nonphysical abuse, and providing a critical analysis of other measures for identifying abuse, community dimensions of elderly self-neglect, and tips for interviewing elders and their caregivers. Beyond issues of identification, Dr. Sengstock’s research and writing about elder abuse included which cases involve the police, aged victims and their criminal offenders, the likelihood of being victimized, aged victims’ decisions to invoke the criminal justice process, spouse abuse as elder abuse, types of services for aged abuse victims, mandatory reporting, community rights in cases of self-neglect, barriers to victims’ receipt of special assistance, interagency problems in serving victims, legal issues in elder abuse, and the adequacy of structural mechanisms to deal with elder abuse. Her contributions to book chapters on elder abuse extend as far back as inclusion in Kosberg’s 1983 The Abuse and Maltreatment of the Elderly. In addition to numerous book chapters, Dr. Sengstock published articles about elder abuse in the Journal of Applied Social Science, Journal of Applied Gerontology, Clinical Sociology Review, Journal of Women and Aging, Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect, Journal of Gerontological Social Work, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Home Health Care Services Quarterly, Victimization of the Elderly and Disabled, Michigan Family Review, Adult Protective Services Network News, and the Journal of Gerontology.
Although truly a scholar of sociology, Dr. Sengstock’s work was not bound by the bookshelves of academia. She conducted multiple training programs on elder abuse for physicians, departments of family services, university departments, and seniors themselves. She was a consultant on elder abuse, family violence, and ethnic relations to a number of agencies, including United Community Services of Metropolitan Detroit, Montana Department of Family Services, Wayne County Michigan Department of Social Services, the State of Michigan Department of Social Services, and the State of Illinois Area Agency on Aging. Dr. Sengstock also served on the editorial board of Sociological Practice, The Gerontologist, Victimization of the Elderly and Disabled, and the Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect. Perhaps the most telling example of the strength of Dr. Sengstock’s advocacy on behalf of victims and Adult Protective Services workers is the videotape she made revealing the results from a recent study in which she did not shy away from chastising policy makers for the unconscionable effects of their budget cuts on victims during Michigan’s economic meltdown (http://clasweb.clas.wayne.edu/multimedia/videos/CLAS-Tube/sengstock.html).
I will remember Dr. Sengstock most for her dedication to students. I was a student of hers as a newly endowed PhD from Wayne State University. It was Dr. Sengstock who took me under her wings in the very early 1980s and showed me the grant-writing ropes that eventually led to the Administration on Aging grant to develop the Comprehensive Index and Elder Abuse Screening Test. It was Dr. Sengstock who showed me how to write academic journal articles and professional book chapters. It was Dr. Sengstock who insisted that our Comprehensive Index be posted digitally in as many venues as possible in the belief that scholarly work should be accessible to all and used to benefit the most vulnerable in our society.
I am only one of hundreds of students that Dr. Sengstock touched in her lifetime. She loved to teach, and her devotion to students was impressive. Her favorite courses were Violence in the Family, Law and Society, Society and Aging, and Social Inequality. She received the Excellence in Teaching Award from Wayne State University’s College of Liberal Arts in 1999. She served as Director of Graduate Studies in Sociology for 12 years. Dr. Sengstock supervised 16 PhD dissertations and 25 MA essays and theses. She was committed to helping nontraditional students succeed in graduate programs, especially women and those from under-represented racial and ethnic groups. Her devotion to promoting the education of diverse students was manifest in 2010 when she anonymously created “The Endowed Scholarship for the Promotion of Diversity” for graduate students at Wayne State.
Dr. Mary Cay Sengstock was not only always focused on her work. She never turned down an invitation to lunch with me over a good glass of wine. She took numerous cruises to Alaska. Although walker-bound for the past few years, she was planning another cruise to Alaska with her daughter for 2015. At our last lunch together, Mary Cay shared pictures and insights from her recent family trip to Israel.
Mary Cay’s son, Dr. David Sengstock, carries on her legacy through his work as a geriatrician and medical researcher. On a regular basis, Dr. David Sengstock would speak to his mother’s classes about medication abuse among the elderly.
Dr. Sengstock’s 19-year battle with cancer ended abruptly. She invited me to say goodbye when she made the decision to enter hospice four days before she died. The first words she said when we met for the last time were “it all happened so fast.” Indeed.
It is with great sadness that I mark the passing of Mary Cay Sengstock; it is also with great gratitude that I have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Sengstock professionally and to have known her personally for more than three decades. The world of Adult Protective Services is better because of Mary Cay’s work.
Melanie Hwalek, PhD
SPEC Associates
Detroit, Michigan