Iowa Legal Aid - Elder Justice Innovation Grant FY2025 - The Iowa Legal Aid (ILA) Elder Justice Innovation Project goals are to identify potential cases of elder financial abuse and to provide supporting services to mitigate the risk of future harm. ILA will work with the six Area Agencies on Aging in Iowa to create an enhanced screening tool for older Iowans to identify potential elder financial abuse. This tool will be used by ILA for older Iowans who contact us for legal help. When financial abuse is suspected, the older Iowan will have a team of legal professionals to address their issues and provide case management services. The project will also focus on education efforts to raise awareness of elder financial abuse through presentations to older Iowans, attorneys in private practice, and through training of Area Agency on Aging staff. Throughout the project, ILA will collect data on the efficacy of our approach as well as stories of individual impact. We will create a White Paper of our work, lessons learned, and results, with steps that can be replicated by other organizations. Our staff will submit this report to Legal Services Corporation, legal publications, and conferences around older adult issues. ILA is uniquely positioned for this work, having established Iowa’s only Legal Hotline for Older Adults in 1989. The Hotline has its own staff of attorneys and paralegals who specialize in serving around 3,000 older Iowans annually. A significant portion of cases involve consumer debt, housing issues, and other matters that may be indicative of elder financial abuse. This new screening tool will enable us to uncover potential abuse more readily and get to the root causes of financial instability. This statewide project will make a significant contribution to the broader understanding of issues around elder financial abuse.
