90 per cent of cases of elder abuse are committed by family members and the head of the Aged Rights Advocacy Service, Carolanne Barkla says it's theft that's the most common form of abuse.
"Financial elder abuse from our perspective is by and far the largest form of abuse perpetrated against older people. In terms of prevalence, we can only do estimates because a lot of older people don't like to talk about financial abuse because generally financial abuse is perpetrated by sons and daughters of older people."
The theft can occur when children are given powers of attorney which enable them to take control of their parents financial and medical affairs.
Carolanne Barkla says her organisation highlighted one appalling example in its annual report where a niece and nephew removed a woman from residential aged care, started charging her rent and stole her money after being granted a power of attorney.
"Their niece and nephew decided they needed her money and so they took her out of residential care and took her home and then her nephew started taking control of her money, and she was charged exorbitant amounts of rent and she has no money left over and usually what happens here is there's an underlying threat that you won't see either your grandchildren or your great nieces and nephews if you don't hand over that money."
The Australian Law Reform Commission wants to create a national register of enduring powers of attorney so financial institutions, lawyers and concerned family members have a means of carrying out checks which are difficult to do under the current system because the states and territories all having their own separate laws which govern Wills and Powers of Attorney.
The Chief Executive of Multicultural Aged Care, Rosa Colanero says a national register would help reduce the complexity and put in place more checks and balances.
"The older person might be living in one state and then the adult children are living in another state and so they're quite used to different laws and requirements and regulation and that just adds to the complexity of it all and really we would advocate that anything that would streamline that process would be of benefit."
Carolanne Barkla says getting good legal advice is important so people can make informed decisions and in the case of people who might have difficulties with English, skilled and independent interpreters are worth having to guide people through the decision making.
"That's really important to ensure that older people have access to interpreters and an appropriate interpreter other than a family member. It's also about ensuring that we engage with a range of communities so that we can talk to the appropriate community in a language that they understand, in a safe environment and ensure that they've also got support services around them."
