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In the wheelchair sits Kay, 79 years old. She suffers from multiple sclerosis.

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Because of the handicapped nature of her illness, Kay is provided with the services of a home help.

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The problem is that one of them used to steal money from her.

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A friend of Kay's has installed a surveillance camera to trap the thief.

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While Kay is in the bathroom, the thief takes one bag, and then a second.

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In total, 2,000 pounds sterling are going to disappear,

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and in doing so plunge Kay into a state of utter confusion and despair.

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When the money started disappearing, Kay was phoning me up at 9 o'clock in the evening,

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3 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, totally hysterical, saying that she's going mad.

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Technically speaking, what happened to Kay is abuse. Her case is not an isolated one.

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It's a real problem in today's society.

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In 2006, King's College London carried out a survey.

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Some 2.6% of the people interviewed claimed to have personally experienced abuse.

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This corresponds to 277,000 people.

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Well, we defined elder abuse to include a number of things, such as financial abuse, psychological abuse,

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as well as physical and sexual forms of abuse.

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And you can also roll into that a neglect, which is also a form of mistreatment.

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Initiatives are taking off across Europe to prevent or curtail the number of cases of abuse.

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The Czech Republic, for example, set up SeniorLine more than 15 years ago.

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This telephone service not only directly addresses elderly people, but also those around them and care staff.

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This morning a woman is calling because her son is extorting money from her.

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We offer him a solution, and we try to make it work.

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Whether it's domestic violence, extortion, abuse or neglect,

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we try to offer it to our counsellors or to friends of the organisation who can work with this problem.

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Even if the number to call is a national one, the solutions to help people in distress are still usually at a local level.

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We're in the Netherlands. Miriam van Dongen travels from community to community to encourage them to set up information centres.

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What I do is that I go to the municipality and together with the people from the Advies en Steunpunt Huis voor het Geweld

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and the municipality, we inform them about elder abuse, so that it can be put on the agenda in the municipality.

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After a two-year effort, 94% of Dutch communities have set up help centres for the elderly.

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This is crucial because life expectancy is increasing all over Europe.

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People aged over 80 are going to be three or four times more numerous in 2050.

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European society is aging, there will always be more people in our society at a very high age,

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and it's clear that we have to address this situation by protecting human rights.

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The European Commission wants to build bridges between member states with the view to sharing knowledge,

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setting up training for medical teams, guaranteeing quality standards and initiating social dialogue,

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so as to improve the lot of care staff.

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The overall objective is to create the right conditions to better protect our elderly.