A qualitative evaluation of the “RISE” elder abuse intervention from the perspective of adult protective services caseworkers: addressing a service system gap

ABSTRACT

Our understanding of effective elder abuse (EA) response interventions is limited. Adult Protective Services (APS), the primary agency responsible for responding to EA, lacks a coherent, conceptually driven, prolonged intervention phase. Informed by an ecological-systems perspective and adapting evidence-based modalities from other fields, the RISE EA intervention addresses this APS systems gap. Based on a three-year pilot project involving a partnership between RISE and Maine APS, the current study conducted a qualitative evaluation of RISE, from the perspective of APS caseworkers (n = 14) who worked with RISE, to understand RISE strengths and areas for improvement. Findings suggest APS workers perceive that RISE complements the scope and nature of APS, enhances APS caseworker well-being, and reduces repeat APS cases, while further APS/RISE collaboration and clarification on RISE role responsibilities and referral eligibilities are areas of growth. This study provides preliminary evidence for RISE as a community-based EA intervention in partnership with APS.

KEYWORDS:

• Elder abuse
• intervention
• evaluation
• RISE
• adult protective services

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all of the investigators, supervisors, staff and leadership at Adult Protective Services in Maine, as well as the Advocates, staff and leadership at the Elder Abuse Institute of Maine, who dedicated so much time and effort to making this project possible. In particular, we would like to thank the Maine APS caseworkers who shared their perspectives in the qualitative interviews reflected in this paper. We would like to thank the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Community Living for funding and supporting this project. Thank you to the Elder Justice Foundation for supporting the initial GAS work precursing the current paper. We also would like to thank members of the national research and practice advisory groups whose input helped to inform the work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [DB], upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. Administration for Community Living [90EJSG0031-01-00].