Aged care groups have called for the establishment of a national body with the power to look into cases of suspected exploitation or elder abuse.

Aged care, legal and welfare experts are gathering for the National Elder Abuse Conference, which will be held in Melbourne over the next three days, organised by Seniors Rights Victoria.

Its manager, Jenny Blakey, said it was estimated about 5 per cent of elderly Australians were victims of physical, emotional or financial abuse by a family member or close friend.

She said an organisation was needed to oversee, and investigate when necessary, the treatment of older Australians.

"Not in a heavy-handed, police-approach way, because that would really scare and could really be detrimental in that sort of response, but a response that could come in and investigate, is this a problem or isn't it, and is this person being isolated so they can't act," she said.

Ms Blakey said many cases went unreported as victims were reluctant to make a complaint against a family member or close friend.

She said aged care, legal and health professionals needed to be given specialised training to recognise the signs of elder abuse.

"So home and community workers, people from hospitals, lawyers, financial people who might be concerned that something is going awry."

Power of attorney laws 'need to be reviewed'

The conference will also examine whether there needs to be changes to power of attorney laws to help protect the elderly from exploitation and abuse.

"Power of attorney can be drawn up, but then they're not registered in a way that [someone] like a bank can check that it exists, or that it hasn't been revoked, and sometimes they need monitoring as well, an audit from time to time to make sure there isn't an abuse of that," Ms Blakey said.

Marion Lau from the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria will present its findings from a three-year community project looking at elder abuse among migrant families.

She said extended families were a tradition in many cultures, making it more difficult for victims to seek outside help.

"If they find that they can't look after themselves and they're being ill-treated by their own family members and they go outside the family to seek help, that is a big stigma," Ms Lau said.

"That means it's very shameful that you can't even look after your own seniors and your elders and you have to go and get a stranger to come and intervene."

Ms Lau said there needed to be more culturally appropriate awareness campaigns.

"People who are experiencing abuses do not know where to go for help and our senior members are increasing their dependency on adult children," she said.

"The Government has funded this project for another three years to train bilingual workers to teach them to different types of actions that can be classified as abuse."