Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

The Tamil community in Toronto is one of the city’s largest immigrant communities. There is no research about elder abuse in the Tamil community in Canada. This poster is based on a mixed methods study that aimed to identify key risk factors that contribute to elder abuse in the Sri Lankan Tamil community in Toronto, Canada. A total of forty-three older Tamil immigrants living in the Greater Toronto Area participated in the study. Participants attended group interviews during which they rated the frequency of occurrence and the importance of risk factors contributing to elder abuse in their community, and then discussed these factors. Participants’ ratings of the importance of key risk factors were analyzed descriptively, and qualitative responses were content analyzed. Participants rated lack of knowledge of English and physical dependence on others as the most important factors contributing to elder abuse. The qualitative data highlighted a range of risk factors at the individual, family, community, and societal levels, and how they intersect to create vulnerability to abuse. For example, social isolation at the micro level may result from individuals health issues, dependence on family for interpretation and transportation, family expectations for unpaid caregiving and household work, but also largely shaped by the neighbourhood physical and social context at the meso-level and ageist and racist immigration and social policies at the macro-level.The emerging strategies to prevent and address elder abuse in this community require a multi-level and multi-sector approach.