An awareness drive to increase understanding of financial abuse has been launched by Safeguarding Ireland.<\/p>\n
The initiative aims to highlight what people can do to “stay in control”, even if they have reduced capacity to manage their own money.<\/p>\n
Information resources include a guide, a summary, an issues paper and a video animation for stakeholder organisations, professionals and families or supporters that outline how people can stay in control of their money, benefits and assets.<\/p>\n
Launching the measures, Safeguarding Ireland’s Chairperson, Patricia Rickard Clarke warned that those who don\u2019t have control of their own money could be at risk of financial abuse.<\/p>\n
“This is especially important for at-risk adults who have frailty, dementia, an acquired brain injury, a serious illness or a disability. The best way to keep your money safe is to stay in control of it,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Rickard Clarke advised people to talk with their bank who will provide help, get support from an advocate, put in place a decision support arrangement and make an Enduring Power of Attorney.<\/p>\n
“An important message is that no-one has the right to use our money without our permission. Family members, next-of-kin or carers have no automatic legal right to take charge of another person\u2019s money,” she said.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Oireachtas Committee on Health published a report which highlighted “serious legal and policy gaps” around adult safeguarding.<\/p>\n
It noted that those gaps extended beyond the Health and Social Care system into areas such as financial abuse, physical abuse, neglect, and the deprivation of liberty.<\/p>\n
From a legal perspective, the report said adult safeguarding was “cross-sectional”, bringing in several areas of law, such as criminal, tort, banking, and family law.<\/p>\n
It said several groups should be involved in inter-agency cooperation, including the Central Bank of Ireland and the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman<\/p>\n
More than 1,500 concerns of financial abuse are reported to the HSE every year. However, the actual level is believed to be much higher according to Safeguarding Ireland.<\/p>\n
In response to a previous commissioned survey by the organisation, 10% of adults in Ireland said they had personally experienced financial abuse, and 80% said the abuser was known to them or to the person abused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An awareness drive to increase understanding of financial abuse has been launched by Safeguarding Ireland. The initiative aims…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175],"class_list":["post-454462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}