The Australian Pensioners' and Superannuants' League Qld Inc. --- "The Long Forgotten" [2002] ElderLawRw 6; (2002) 1 Elder Law Review 10

THE LONG FORGOTTEN

The Australian Pensioners’ and Superannuants’ League Qld Inc.

Sometimes, in the zeal to develop legislative solutions for the problems confronting particular groups within our society, the focus becomes so narrow that the larger picture is completely lost and other people get forgotten.

This appears to be the case for a segment of our population who seldom make it into the spotlight of the media or into the public gaze.

I am referring to older people who don’t fit into the ‘boxes’ described by either society or the law.

Please allow me to digress momentarily.

Here in Queensland there is continuing and unresolved debate proceeding about the definition of ‘capacity’ as it relates to people who may be in need of various advocacy services ... and this is the very nub of the problem for the long forgotten people.

We have legislative protection for people with mental and / or physical disabilities via the Adult Guardian and the Public Advocate, we have State and Federally funded programmes and services for some of the ageing, for people with physical or mental disability and we have forms of consumer protection for residents of nursing homes and some hostels ... but ...what about the other people?

There are many hundreds, if not thousands of elderly people, and frequently the not-so-elderly, who do not have the ‘capacity’ to fend for themselves in an increasingly complex and sometimes hostile environment.

These are the people who do not necessarily have a defined disability but who, for whatever reason, do not have the financial, emotional, educational or strength of personal assertiveness ‘capacity’ to deal with bureaucracies, with the legal system, with the complexities of a social milieu that does not have the resources to provide support for them.

These are the people for whom the very mention of the words ‘law’ or ‘legal’ fills them with fear and dread because they do not have the education to understand or the money to fund legal action.

These are the people who live in terror of asserting themselves for fear of some unnamed and unidentified retribution.

These are the people for whom a bureaucracy is a faceless terror and who cannot even contemplate the steps necessary to fill in a complex form.

These are the people who, for a lifetime have been exhorted not to make waves.

These are also the people in retirement villages who are theoretically protected through access to a statutory tribunal for problem solving who, when they arrive are confronted with paid lawyers representing the owners and neither the skills nor the temerity to argue on their own behalf.

After one recent case, a lawyer stated that anyone considering appearing at such a tribunal should be legally represented. But where do the ‘little people’ get the necessary funds for such action?

The only possible resource for the elderly amongst these people in Queensland is the Caxton Legal Centre, a legal outreach project for older people, but one whose funding is extremely limited and therefore unable to cope with more than a handful of issues and whose funding is only guaranteed until June 2002.

And then there are grandparents.

In the October 2001 issue of The Comet, the newsletter of the Australian Pensioners’ and Superannuants’ League Qld Inc. (APSL), the lead story was an initial look a the increasing trend for grandparents to become ‘second time’ parents.

And yet grandparents have no rights when it comes to their grandchildren, even when the grandparents are the primary carers.

Grandparents are allowed to raise their grandchildren, but are not allowed to sign school activity forms on the child’s behalf.

Frequently where one or both of the children’s parents are involved with drugs, those parents will rely on the grandparents to look after the children, but will use the children as bargaining tools for extra cash from the grandparents with the threat of taking the children back, usually into an unsatisfactory environment.

And where a grandparent tries to warn the authorities of situations of child neglect by the children’s parents, they are told to mind their own business, they are ‘only grandparents’.

This is only part of the story of the long forgotten, but who really cares?