Elderly Abuse: Financial, Self-Neglect, and more.

The following map indicators portray Financial Abuse, Malnutrition/Dehydration, Self-Neglect, Physical Care, Medical Care, and Health & Safety Hazards in the state of California. A few major counties in California such as Los Angeles County, San Diego County, Fresno County, and Bay Area counties were focus points in our research. Population and Income average are indicators link the number of cases displayed per county.

Hotspot analysis is a spatial analysis tool that identifies clusters of spatial phenomena. A hotspot is an area that has higher concentration of events compared to the expected value given a random distribution of events.For statistically significant positive z-scores, the larger the z-score is, the more intense the clustering of high values (hot spot). For statistically significant negative z-scores, the smaller the z-score is, the more intense the clustering of low values (cold spot).

This map consists of two indicators, elderly financial abuse (Green) and malnutrition/dehydration (Red) . Some major counties in California will be focused on but not limited to Los Angeles county, San Diego county, Fresno County, Sacramento County, San Francisco, and San Jose County. Los Angeles County has 148 cases of malnutrition/dehydration and 141 cases of elderly financial abuse. San Diego county has 8 cases of malnutrition/dehydration and 52 cases of elderly financial abuse. Fresno county has 8 cases of malnutrition/dehydration and 10 elderly financial abuse cases. Sacramento County has 6 cases of malnutrition/dehydration and 20 cases of elderly financial abuse. San Francisco county has 42 malnutrition/dehydration cases and 55 elderly financial abuse cases. Last but not least, San Jose (Santa Clara County) has 5 malnutrition/dehydration cases and 10 elderly financial abuse cases.

In the map below, purple indicates Health and Safety Hazards and orange indicates Medical Care, which has a lot of cases in these different counties. For San Francisco in the bay area, there are 176 cases for health and safety hazards and 86 cases for medical care. Another one in the bay area, San Jose, also shows us 30 cases for medical care and 100 cases for health and safety hazards. Below San Jose, Fresno for its high crime rate and low income average, it also displays 15 cases of medical care and 72 cases for health and safety hazards. Sacramento, the capital of the U.S state of California also has 64 cases for medical care and 181 cases for health and safety hazards. For being the border city, San Diego has 83 cases for medical care and 315 cases for health and safety hazards. Lastly, Los Angeles County portrays 381 cases for medical care and 764 cases for health and safety hazards. This implies that Los Angeles County has the most cases for each of the indicators due to its large population.

The following cases for Self-Neglect (Purple Diamonds) and Physical Care (Red Circles) demonstrate the concentration throughout the state of California. One can see a clear overlap of data in major metropolitan areas; Bay Area, SoCal, and NorCal. The distinctions are based on geographical areas, income, and crime rates. San Diego being a border city tallies a case number of 292 Self-Neglect and 46 Physical Care cases. As we move upstate into Los Angeles County one can see a rise in case numbers for both indicators Self-Neglect (850) and Physical Care (325). A sharp decline in cases in Fresno can be noticed due to the low amount of population in comparison to major metropolitan cities, only logging 87 and 9 cases respectively. As we reach the Bay Area, we can see an increase once again, San Francisco's Self-Neglect cases rocketing to 295 and 137 for Physical Care. San Jose also follows suit in an increase of both Self-Neglect & Physical Care with 117 and 64 respectively. Sacramento logged 295 and 137 cases for its respective categories as well.

Elderly abuse cases throughout California shows a pattern between the number of cases in multiple counties, their average income, and population density. Counties such as Fresno and Los Angeles show a disparity between their average income per elderly as opposed to Santa Clarita and San Francisco counterparts. This demonstrates that the elderly population in Fresno and Los Angeles is more susceptible to abuse because of their lower income. However, it is important to highlight the population density that greatly influences the amount of cases shown, one should focus on the ratios instead. Follow up policy recommendations should involve a shift of budget focus on, counties that previously demonstrated an outstanding number of cases and low average income counties. By Increasing budgets, this should leverage low average incomes, therefore allowing the counties to provide help and support for the elderly to be protected from any kind of abuse.