What is financial abuse?

Financial abuse

This includes when somebody:

takes your money or belongings
makes you buy something that you do not want
uses your money to pay for their things
will not let you choose how to spend or use your money
says that you have to give them your money, belongings or home.

How do you protect yourself?

There are ways to reduce your risk of being financially abused:

Keep your money in a bank or financial institution, not at home.
Have regular cheques and payments
deposited directly into a bank account.
Arrange to have bills paid by direct debit from your bank account.
Keep a list of all property, bank accounts and valuables. Keep this in a safe place.
Ask a solicitor how a Power of Attorney can make sure that your wishes are followed if you are unable to manage your finances.
Ask a trusted friend or family member to review all documents before signing or before making a financial decision if you are feeling pressured.
Never give your PIN (Personal Identification Number) for your debit or credit cards to anyone.
Plan ahead. Prepare a Will with a solicitor’s help, review it periodically to keep it up-to-date, and change it only after careful consideration.

What to do if you think you have suffered financial abuse

If you think that you may have experienced financial abuse, you should immediately tell your care coordinator, named nurse or any other professional working with you, who you trust. Their contact details should be on your care plan.

We will then work with you, and anyone else who can help you. This may include the police and other services.

If the person who financially abused you is important to you, we will try to help you keep your relationship with them if you wish.

What information will we need?

We will ask you to give brief details about what has happened and who did what.

Any information you give will be used sensitively and will be shared on a confidential basis with other agencies that might need to help. This may need to be shared without your consent if we are very worried about yours or someone else’s safety.

What will happen?

We will:

always take what you report seriously.
listen to you and respect your wishes.
give you immediate help and support to help you to keep safe and to ensure the abuse stops.
try and act in your best interests if you are unable to make your own decisions. If you find it difficult to understand what is happening, we will ask you if you want an advocate, or the support of a carer, relative or friend.
will keep you informed of what is happening to keep you safe.
ask if, and how, you wish to take part in any investigation or in planning to safeguard you from abuse or neglect in the future.
ask what you want to happen.

What happens next?

A meeting may be arranged to look at what has happened and what can be done to prevent this from happening again.

You will be invited to attend and a safeguarding plan may be put place to reduce the possibility of further abuse.

What happens afterwards?

Once any investigation or safeguarding plan is completed, we will ask you if you feel safer and if you feel your views and wishes were listened to and taken seriously.

We hope that you will tell us what your experience was, so we can improve how we work with people to keep them safe in the future.

How long will the process take?

Some safeguarding issues can be dealt with quite quickly, but others can be complex and take longer to sort out. We will keep you up to date on what is happening.

If you are not happy with the way we have tried to help keep you safe

If you think something is going wrong with the way we are trying to help you

let us know as soon as possible, so we can try and put it right at once – don’t keep silent or wait until the end of the investigation to tell us you are not happy.
discuss your concerns with the people directly involved and see if they can resolve the issue.

If the issue is still not resolved, you can contact PALS or make a complaint.