Elder Abuse, from a financial standpoint, amounts to almost $3billion annually, according to the Metlife Mature Market Institute.  Elder abuse can be everything from financial exploitation to unsanitary living conditions, fraud, and other matters.  For instance, we have a case going on right now against a Beaufort, South Carolina assisted living facility run by Assisted Living Concepts, Helena House, in which our client alleges that SHE was forced to bath her own mother, that activities were not provided, that the facility was understaffed, and that basically the promises made by the facility were not kept.  This same facility, it turns out, we allege was operating without a real administrator, in violation of South Carolina assisted living facility regulations, and it had numerous other ongoing problems.

One of our clients was allowed to escape from Helena House, in what we allege constituted South Carolina assisted living neglect, without anyone’s knowledge, despite being on notice that he presented as a problem in this regard. The facility actually documented that to prevent it, they would need to conduct “frequent” checks.  Instead, a caregiver, who was found by the state of South Carolina not to have proper training documentation in her file, was allowed to watch over him.  Our client was found six blocks away by passerby, who called the police.  Our client had a broken hip.  When the police called, this same caregiver alleged she just noticed our client missing.

We investigate claims such as this, and believe that the for-profit out of state companies place little value in the rights of South Carolina’s citizens, instead they have a for-profit business model, and getting rid of residents who pay sometimes $5,000.00 a month just doesn’t seem to fit the business plan, no matter whether or not they can take care of them.  These kind of things are why I do what I do.

Tomorrow, I have depositions against another assisted living facility, Rosewood Assisted Living, in Columbia, South Carolina.  In this Columbia assisted living neglect claim, our client suffered a fractured hip as a result of a fall.  We have an elder care falls lawsuit pending in Orangeburg, South Carolina in this case as a result of some of the co-defendants.  We will take the depositions.  Its always – what you said you would do, what you were supposed to do, and what you did.  We allege that it rarely ends up being the same thing.

Until then, we will keep fighting.