ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors explore violence and mistreatment in the lives of older adults by de-centring the personal in order to render the structural more apparent. This means critically examining the systems, practices, and processes that create, support, and facilitate violence and mistreatment in older adults’ lives. The authors discuss a critical understanding of how mistreatment and violence are conceptualized in the lives of older adults. They explore the different ways that older adults experience mistreatment and violence, including across the life course. The authors aim to understand the work that social workers can draw upon in their practice that are based upon Anti-oppressive practice. Social workers and other professionals and organizations working to intervene with mistreatment and violence are more apt to recognize and relate to direct violence, because of its relative “visibility”. Interventions in social work are reflexive or technical in nature.
