Vi­o­lence in all ar­eas, crim­i­nal and do­mes­tic, is a grow­ing so­cial prob­lem in T&T and even the el­der­ly are not spared.This was one of the is­sues be­ing ex­am­ined by PhD stu­dent Ann-Marie El­bourne-Coun­ty dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion ti­tled: Con­tribut­ing fac­tors that lead to crime and fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion among the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion.

El­bourne-Coun­ty, of the crim­i­nol­o­gy unit, pre­sent­ed a pi­lot study at a post grad­u­ate re­search con­fer­ence held on Thurs­day at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine.She said her re­search showed that the lat­est cen­sus con­duct­ed in 2011 and pub­lished in 2013, found that T&T has an ag­ing pop­u­la­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 130,000 peo­ple over the age of 65.

The study, which she said was still a work in progress, al­so sought to ex­am­ine fi­nan­cial ex­ploita­tion by rel­a­tives and care­givers which could al­so in­cor­po­rate oth­er forms of abuse in­clud­ing phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al abuse and ne­glect.El­bourne-Coun­ty said it was the State's re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the el­der­ly re­ceived an ac­cept­able qual­i­ty of care as they con­tributed years of their lives in build­ing the coun­try.

In in­ter­view­ing about ten el­der­ly peo­ple, El­bourne-Coun­ty's pi­lot study found a num­ber of is­sues which af­fect­ed them in­clud­ed so­ci­ety's per­cep­tion that they were "old and stu­pid and suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer's dis­ease, lack of fam­i­ly in­clu­sion and sup­port, lack of re­sources to prop­er­ly se­cure them­selves and be­ing iso­lat­ed and lone­ly.Up­on com­ple­tion of the study El­bourne-Coun­ty said the aim was to prop­er­ly de­vel­op an un­der­stand­ing of the fac­tors that con­tribute to the prob­lems fac­ing the el­der­ly and de­vel­op ap­pro­pri­ate so­lu­tions.