Research and interventions addressing mistreatment of older adults have long focused on individuals who experience mistreatment, rather than on those who commit it. However, attention is increasingly turning to perpetrators and the need to develop interventions that address their needs. Existing research documents a wide range of possible interventions targeting perpetrators, including monitoring, legal interventions, individualized healthcare and psychosocial support, as well as mediation, harm reduction, and restorative justice approaches. Despite these contributions, there remains a need to expand research on this topic and critically examine the interventions implemented in practice. Drawing on a literature review and interviews with key informants involved in countering mistreatment in Quebec, this presentation explores current interventions and approaches directed at individuals who commit mistreatment, with a particular focus on the contexts in which these interventions are embedded and what they emphasize and overlook. Preliminary findings suggest that existing interventions for individuals who commit mistreatment in Quebec primarily emphasize perpetrator education through individual or family meetings and support for caregivers, or target perpetrators’ underlying issues without accounting for the relational dynamics of mistreatment. Preliminary findings also indicate that perpetrators remain overlooked in broader interventions and policies aimed at addressing mistreatment of older adults.
While interventions in contexts of elder mistreatment are often understood through more structured and institutionalized models, the community sector enables practices that are more informal, ongoing, and adaptable to each individual’s situation, often requiring considerable creativity and resourcefulness from workers.
Drawing on qualitative findings from a research project on the role of the community sector in addressing elder mistreatment, this presentation examines the particularities of community-sector intervention in Quebec and explores how key conditions of practice, such as time, flexibility, and perceived neutrality, make possible forms of intervention that center the needs and lived experience of older adults. These conditions support forms of accompaniment that are deeply valued by older adults, including presence, respect for their pace, and the development of trust. In this context, relationships between workers and older adults are not secondary, but rather constitute a central and meaningful dimension of intervention.
By bringing attention to community-based practices that may be less visible in mainstream institutional settings, this presentation contributes to broadening current understandings of what counts as intervention in contexts of elder mistreatment.
Intervening in situations of mistreatment involving older adults represents a challenge for health and social services professionals. This challenge is compounded by the fact that the criteria used to define what constitutes mistreatment are not universal, but vary, among other things, according to perceptions, individual sensitivities, and sociocultural contexts. Determining the criteria by which mistreatment is recognized as a problem is intrinsically linked to the threshold beyond which individuals and society consider it as such. In this respect, mistreatment is recognized as a socially legitimate problem when there is social consensus or when the harm caused to the individual exceeds what is considered socially acceptable.
Drawing on the results of two studies, one focusing on intervention practices in the community sector, and the other on those of healthcare professionals in situations of psychological mistreatment, this presentation proposes to examine the moral threshold at which it becomes legitimate to intervene. It pays particular attention to what it means to “intervene” in these contexts, to the values and norms that guide action, as well as to the processes through which the legitimacy of intervention is constructed. In doing so, this presentation contributes to a critical reflection on the moral and social foundations of intervention in contexts of mistreatment.
Mistreatment of older adults remains a major concern in residential and long-term care settings. In Québec, Canada, despite reporting obligations mandated by law, institutional policies and lecture-based training offered to healthcare workers, many challenges remain, notably the ongoing difficulty to recognize and to report situations of mistreatment.
To address these challenges, CIUSSS West-Central Montreal and its research centre, CREGÉS, developed an innovative immersive training program called “Addressing Mistreatment and Promoting Good Treatment in 360.” The training combines a virtual reality experience with a guided group discussion led by trained facilitators and designed for different professionals (personal support workers, nurses, social workers). Through six 360 video scenarios in both French and English, the training presents several forms of mistreatment (physical, psychological, financial and organisational). Its goal is to strengthen participants’ knowledge, awareness, and comfort with reporting, while promoting a culture of good treatment. Since fall 2025, 17 training sessions have been given, reaching over 200 participants.
Supported by a participatory formative evaluation, which combined multiple methods (qualitative and quantitative), this presentation will focus on the results of this evaluation process and on the implications for developing effective knowledge transfer approaches that are adapted to the realities of specific participant groups. It will also highlight the importance of a participatory formative evaluative approach in adapting and addressing context issues as the training unfolds.
The presentation explores reflections around (non-intentional) mistreatment in the context of the dissemination of an ethnographic film. As a student in anthropology, I was invited to film the creative process of a performance involving artists, social scientists and older woman, centered on institutionalized geriatric care in Québec. In this context, I was also invited to direct a short ethnographic film focusing on these older women and their relationship to aging and dying, as experienced through the creative process.
After watching themselves on screen, the two protagonists had very different reactions. One felt positively represented and believed the film should be shared to raise awareness about ageism. For the other, however, the experience was deeply distressing. She didn’t want the film to be made public because she “looked too old”.
In this presentation, I examine how these contradicting reactions raise questions about, on one hand, my ethical positioning while filming, and on the other hand, the notion of mistreatment in relation to the filmed aging subject. How can technologies that capture and rapidly disseminate images and sounds be used to (consciously or inadvertently) reproduce mistreatment towards older adults? To support this reflection, I draw on various ethnographic films, documentaries, and online video content. While such technologies can help fight age discrimination, how should the ethnographic agreement be structured to ensure this outcome? The presentation concludes on the complexities of self-stigmatization and internalized ageism.
In Quebec (Canada), there are official multisectoral structures for reporting mistreatment and promoting collaboration with different instances from the financial, legal, medical and psychosocial domains. Still, there is a lack of understanding regarding the role of community organizations in the management of mistreatment situations and how they are integrated in the overall structure of response. This study aimed at better understanding the real-life internal and intersectoral practices of community organizations for managing mistreatment situations.
Methods: In a semi-rural region of Quebec, the perspectives of 24 representatives from multiple community organizations and the social and health care system were collected using 4 focus groups and 6 individual interviews. Qualitative data was transcribed and analyzed using the approach of Miles, Huberman and Saldana (2019).
Results: Community organizations are focused on raising awareness and identifying mistreatment as well as helping people to recognize and report their situation. In some cases, co-intervention with other community organizations with complementary expertise is performed. Complex cases are referred to the social and health care system and managed through a specialized multidisciplinary process. Participants suggested that coordinating services between organizations could avoid duplication of interventions and facilitate the transmission of information.
Conclusions: There are no standardized trajectories for managing mistreatment situations. With the social and healthcare system as the primary body responsible for the management of these situations, community organizations often lack information and have a limited ability to act