Welcome to Adult Abuse Review!

We are very excited to bring you the inaugural issue of Adult Abuse Review (AAR), an innovative, cross-discipline, monthly newsletter for those working with or making policy for abused and at-risk elders and adults with disabilities.

Speaking dryly, AAR provides reviews and summaries of relevant publications, research, services, policy efforts, websites, news coverage, and other developments and resources relevant to adult abuse prevention and intervention.

But the concept and mission behind AAR is far more juicy than that description suggests. AAR expects to be a catalyst, a connector, an inspiration, and a permanent resource for professionals in the full range of systems and entities involved in addressing and preventing elder and vulnerable adult abuse, neglect, exploitation, and self-neglect. We seek to be relevant to and build bridges of understanding and collaboration between adult protective services, law enforcement and criminal justice officials, domestic violence programs, aging services, lawmakers, disability organizations, health and mental health care professionals, lawyers, and many others by:

Monitoring dozens of publications and websites from a wide variety of disciplines and perspectives to bring you a wide range of news and resources that are directly relevant to your work;

Searching out and reviewing new training manuals, videos, public awareness pieces, and other materials that can fill your identified training and public awareness needs or jump-start your own projects;

Connecting readers to new ideas, developments, and people from areas far afield of “the usual suspects,” to decrease feelings of working in a vacuum, increase feelings of hope, and inspire new approaches; and

Keeping up on new research, translating what may seem like impenetrable and irrelevant discourse between academics into the ideas and findings you can actually apply to your work.

AAR’s mission includes covering all topics related to elder and vulnerable adult abuse and neglect. Our scope includes domestic and institutional abuse, self-neglect and abuse by others, domestic violence and paid caregiver exploitation, perpetrator and victim issues, prevention and intervention, services and prosecution, etc. Although there are advantages to narrowly focusing on topics such as domestic violence or elder abuse or issues from a health care providers’ perspective, AAR is designed to create the cross-fertilization and connection building that happen when varied ideas and perspectives come together in one place.

Speaking of connection building, AAR also wants to establish a dynamic, ongoing conversation with its readers. Every month we will ask for information on a specific topic, the results of which will be published in the next issue. This will provide a mechanism for building the resource databases we so badly need. We also ask you to send us letters to the editor; leads to news, reports, videos, and programs; questions; ideas; tips on what publications AAR should be regularly reviewing for our readers; and whatever else you’d like to share. We are especially interested in hearing from people who are involved in a successful program or service or who have figured out a useful strategy for solving a perennial problem. If you’d far prefer to keep working than struggle to write up what you’ve learned, let us help. We’ll interview you, peers, clients, or anyone else who can shed light on what you’re doing, read any documents you care to share with us, and then pull the pieces into a coherent whole that will allow others to learn from your hard work.

Creating an Online Resource Library

A very important part of AAR is our website at www.wordbridges.net/elderabuse/. Most newsletters are designed, at best, to be read once and trashed. Those that are archived are so dauntingly hard to search that few people attempt to use them to find the information they currently need. AAR’s evolving website is designed to archive individual articles in ways that make it possible for people to easily find what they need exactly when they need it. Thus, AAR will be an integral part of a growing, always-available collection of resources, to help ensure that those who work with abused and at-risk elders and vulnerable adults spend their valuable time becoming more effective, instead of wasting it trying to locate the wheels they know someone else has already invented.

So what is this wonderful resource going to cost you? Nothing. Anyone who can access the Web can read or download it, and anyone with an email address can get notices of when each new edition is available. That, too, is part of AAR’s mission: to help abused and at-risk elders and vulnerable adults by disseminating information to and building skills among as many professionals as possible, to increase their chances of meeting someone who will recognize what’s going on and help them solve it. It is a labor of love and public service by the staff of WordBridges, a small consulting company that specializes in connecting people through communication. Our staff currently consists of Loree Cook-Daniels, a researcher, writer, and facilitator with more than three decades’ experience in public policy, aging issues, and elder abuse; and michael munson, a webmaster, educator, advocate, and community organizer who specializes in disability and sexual and gender minority issues.

You can support us in several ways. First, tell your colleagues, peers, and contacts how to tap into this resource; the more AAR is disseminated, the more effective we will be in raising awareness, interest, and expertise in elder and vulnerable adult abuse. Second, send us your publications, reports, leads, and ideas, so that we can disseminate what you’ve created or found. Third, donate mailing lists and other financial* and in-kind resources so that we can aggressively “market” AAR to those who might benefit from reading it. And, finally, consider hiring WordBridges when you have a project for which you need help. You can find out more about us by going to
www.WordBridges.net.

We believe AAR is quickly going to become a positive force in advancing the elder and adult abuse fields. We hope you will join us.

* At present, neither AAR nor WordBridges is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Therefore, donations are NOT tax deductible.