And it may not be as easy to spot elder abuse as child abuse. My mother had MS, so fair enough the she wasn't elderly, but the fact that she was (for all intents and purposes) paralysed from the neck down made her situation very similar. The combination of Medicaid/Medicare and her insurance would only pay for 9 hours of care in her home, which I know sounds like a fair amount, until you realise that more often than not the carers never bothered to show up and if they did, they didn't do their job properly and a few of them stole from her on a regular basis (we found out later that the agency never carried out background checks and one of the carers had SEVEN prior convictions for credit card theft). My mother ended up developing a rather large bed sore, which necessitated the surgeon's removing her tail bone and taking out about a grapefruit-sized chunk of material from her body, requiring her to enter into a nursing home so that she could be turned every two hours like clockwork until it healed. I was in university in a city two hours away at the time, so there was no way I could continue with my studies and provide that level of care. In the state where she lived, nursing homes are required to have available the past several inspection reports. There are also organisations that will send them to you and let me tell you, some of them make of harrowing reading, especially when you are considering sending a loved one to one of those facilities. I spent two months reading reports and visiting various homes up and down her state. I discovered that it was useful to bring along my boyfriend, as he could do the business of being polite and making eye contact with whomever was showing us around, which left me free to hang back and observe aspects of the home that they probably rathered I didn't see. I realise that most people don't have the luxury of having that amount of time to find a good nursing facility (un/fortunately enough her condition was such that the hospital could blag to the insurance carriers about her need to stay with them a while longer) and in the end we only found the home that we did out of luck. I'm only saying that it took me THAT long to find somewhere to find some place that I felt was safe enough for her (I should probably add that I may have been overly cautious, as the last time she was temporarily put into a home - when she broke her hip - a staff member tried to rape her). In the end I was lucky enough to not only find a home where her physical needs were looked after, but where she also felt at home spiritually and mentally. The staff did an excellent job of making sure that residents could attend one of the church services if they wanted to (including assisting those less ambulatory), organising social and seasonal events, taking them on outings, etc. and would call me if they felt my mother was unhappy for whatever reason. Many of the nurses developed a deep bond with my mother and wept like children when she passed away. I can not express the gratitude that I felt for how well they looked after her when I couldn't be there myself. It does take a special person to be an excellent carer (one of the earlier posts mentioned the ideal person spec for the job) and we were lucky enough that the home was near a university where many of the staff members were studying to become nurses, physio therapists and doctors and already had most of those qualities. I know that we could spend hours discussing horror stories, but I think that we have to admit too, that the job of a carer can be a VERY demanding one (both physically and emotionally). In many instances their job is considered to be a low- or non-skilled occupation and is compensated accordingly. If you've ever had a loved one needing that level of care (and have had to provide it yourself!), I'm sure that you would agree that it is most certainly NOT a low-skilled job and deserves the compensation and attention in the recruitment and hiring process to match.