Christian Porter estimates that as many as 185,000 Australians could be experiencing elder abuse each year

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The federal government is aiming to crack down on elder abuse with a new national hotline and $18m over four years for frontline services trials designed to support victims.

Announcing the initiative on Tuesday, the federal attorney general, Christian Porter, said the trials would consist of five specialist elder abuse units, three health justice partnerships, and four case management and mediation services.

Every state and territory will have a trial site up and running by the end of June.

Some of the cases of abuse the hotline aims to tackle include threats to send elderly parents to an aged care centre, selling off the family home and using access to grandchildren as a blackmail tactic to get money.

“No Australian should feel ashamed about seeking help on this critical issue,” Porter told reporters in Perth.

He flagged a trial site in Western Australia’s Kimberley region aimed at helping Indigenous elderly people.

The government is also commissioning a national study to work out how widespread the problem is.

Porter estimated that as many as 185,000 Australians could be experiencing some kind of elder abuse nationally each year.

Elder abuse can include incidents of a physical, psychological, sexual and financial nature.

The age discrimination commissioner, Kay Patterson, said the national hotline made her job easier because she would no longer have to provide dozens of phone numbers in different states.

“To any older person who is out there thinking, ‘I’m not sure where my money is going, I don’t know what’s happening to my medication, I feel concerned that people are controlling my life’, that’s the number to ring and there will be people who are experienced to help them in their state or territory,” she said.

Uniting Care in Queensland runs an elder abuse prevention unit and in 2016/17 received 1,652 elder abuse calls to its hotline, representing a 7% increase on the previous year.

The largest group of victims were aged 80 to 84 years.

It reported twice as many female victims than male victims in 2016/2017 – 1,217 to 572.

The majority of cases were financial and psychological abuse.

According to its annual report, alleged perpetrators were most likely to be the children of victims in 76.3% of cases – sons 38.6% and daughters 37.7%.

The issue of elder abuse is likely to be considered by the royal commission into aged care.

• People grappling with elder abuse can call the new national hotline: 1800 ELDERHelp [1800 353 374]

Australian Associated Press contributed to this report