Whether your elderly parent is in a home or has a caregiver working part-time, it is important that you make sure about their security. It is easy to forget about security for people who are close to you and you care about. Unfortunately, unless you take care of these concerns, there is the probability that your parent or parents could end up losing money.
It is not a coincidence that identity theft is a white collar crime which has one of the highest occurrences. Victims sometimes find themselves the victims of more than one criminal. It can happen to anyone, not just the elderly, but also to credit card holders, and even to work-from home professionals. If it can happen to people who can be vigilant about their credit card, driver’s license or social security details, then it is easy to see that the elderly are easy targets.
Beside crimes involving identity theft or finances, there are other nefarious activities which can befall the elderly. Violence and sex crimes against the elderly have also been reported.
Finding ways on how to protect elders from their care givers is one aspect of identity theft which can be controlled by being pro-active and being vigilant. There are several ways to do this:
1. Have a contract between the care giver and your parent. Standard agreements between the elderly and their caregivers can be downloaded from the internet. These agreements protect the interest of the stakeholders. A contract between the caregiver and the elderly protects the caregiver from abuse and non-payment. The agreement would also ensure that elderly patients would not get defrauded by their caregivers.
2. Have duplicate copies of bank statements and credit card statements of accounts sent to your residence. You would need to ask your parent’s bank for this. You can double check the details of the account and see the expenses. If there are unusual activities in the bank statements, you can call in the police for consultation regarding what you can do to protect your parent’s finances.
3. Have a agreement drawn up to assign you power-of attorney for your parents’ finances and property. A lot of crimes to defraud the elderly make use of the victims’ signatures on deeds of sales, deed of assignments, and powers of attorney. In most instances, there is no need to forge an elderly’s signature. After gaining their trust, the elderly would sign almost any document to their caregiver.
4. Visit them often. It is important the elderly should not feel left out. When no relatives visit them, it is much easier for other people to take advantage of them.
The above are relatively easy steps to follow to ensure that the elderly are being properly taken care of and that they are not being abused or defrauded of money.
This article is written by Artchee exclusively for this site. Artchee is also a contributing writer for Nursing Homes in Charlotte.