Upstandership

Concerned persons practice what I call Upstandership, which is:

• An ethic and practice of standing up to social injustice, chronic and acute;

• Embodied by our social compact (redefined) between society and ourselves, in equal measure;

• Not a single act but a process of shaping our individual (personal and professional) capacity to act and our community capacity to respond;

• Cradled in trust, realized through our responsibility and relationships.

Upstandership includes eight steps (in bold), each expressed on its own terms and in relation to others.

1. Our hero’s journey…

• As concerned persons, we are brought to attention by persons suffering from harm.

• Awareness fosters concern over the safety of persons in harm’s way and contextual supportive and risk factors.

• Through knowledge, we recognize alleged or actual injustice, victims and their needs, others in victims’ circles of support, and community capacity.

2. A trauma-informed response…

• In knowledge we recognize our personal and/or professional responsibility to act. We know that to be complacent about justice is to be complicit in abuse. We know that our silence protects perpetrators, not victims.

• This compels us to action, achieved through agency and realized when we report, refer, or intervene with safety considerations in mind.

• To achieve agency, our individual responsibility must be articulated with a societal collective “response-ability,” society’s ability to respond. Action through inter-action is achieved by coordinated community response guided by policy and protocol, community connections, supportive services, education and training, and legislative acts that permit or mandate us to act.

• Justice is achieved through a survivor-centered response to address the safety of victims (primary and secondary), trauma-informed care, offender accountability, restitution, and resiliency through justice — including parallel justice (Susan Herman 2011) and transformative justice(Howard Zehr 2011).

3. As credible messengers…

• Credible messengers, primary victims and concerned persons in formal and informal social networks, raise concern and capacity society-wide through advocacy, which demands and commands citizens’ attention,allowing victims to come full circle and become whole again.

To repeat: In practicing Upstandership, we need to know society has our back when we act. Otherwise, we feel helpless and hopeless, as do those we seek to help.

As concerned persons trying to help a person subject to guardianship, we are brought to attention when the social harm of guardianship is inflicted on individuals through lack of due process, representation, and other constitutional rights. Harm is amplified by abuse and exploitation inherent in this environment.

When we realize that a state system intended to protect older adults frequently protects bad actors, our awareness of the guardianship comes as a severe shock.

Knowledge of such injustice is compounded when we experience the difficulty of helping or even reaching out to a loved one as we and others in a victim’s circle of support are “legally” isolated and neutralized in much the same way a person under guardianship is. Such circumstances curtail community capacity.

Despite the odds, in knowledge we acknowledge our personal and/or professional responsibility to act. We know that to be complacent about justice is to be complicit in abuse. We know that our silence protects perpetrators, not victims. We know we are being silenced.

Still, faced with this injustice, we can’t stay silent. So we draw on whatever agency remains, even if its action potential is compromised or denied in our limitation to report, refer, or intervene — all acts that diminish the safety of concerned persons and those subject to guardianship abuse.

Our individual responsibility is not met with a societal “response-ability.” There is seldom a coordinated community response guided by policy and protocol, community connections, supportive services, and legislative acts that permit or mandate us to act. At least not yet.

Justice is compromised or denied — as is the safety of victims (primary and secondary), trauma-informed care, and offender accountability aimed at system change.

As concerned persons, we’ve borne witness to egregious abuses of power within the very system meant to uphold justice. We refuse to be silent victims.

For concerned persons, the heart of practicing Upstandership is our “standing.” Yet, in guardianship we and most of society have no standing. These flagrant infringements compel us to fight for reform and expose the systemic flaws that breed such injustice. Our ordeal serves as a stark reminder of the need to safeguard the integrity of the justice system for all.

Through hard-learned experience, we serve as credible messengers as we aim to enrage and engage society through advocacy to demand and command citizens’ attention. Yet, despite decades of efforts against guardianship, we and society have not come full circle and become whole.

In the words of Rosaria Shaver (pers. comm. January 5, 2024)

“Guardianships can destroy lives… Over the last few years, I have felt angry, powerless, shattered, and disappointed, and I am heartbroken for my mom. She is 92 and I will seek the truth for my mom in her final years and a recognition of the abuse that has been done to her by her son and a court that was willing to take away her rights and dignity based on shallow evidence and calculated manipulation. I will not go away! 

This series on guardianship abuse and exploitation is kindled and sparked by the saga and determination of concerned citizens countrywide — especially concerned persons who are traumatized by their personal experiences as they desperately attempt to save loved ones from state guardianship, a system set up as a social safety net that instead turned into a criminal network.

Elder justice has come of age

By 2030, the U.S. will have over 70 million shades of gray — each with their own hue, value, and chroma to color our world far beyond the polarizing perceptions of a black-and-white approach to individuals, to capability, and to our future selves.

We pause to recognize advances in our elder justice movement that is coming of age just as ten thousand older Americans celebrate their 65th birthday every day. Advances are being achieved through awareness, research, practice, policy, legislation, justice, and the hard work of each of us.

We pause as birthday wishes are made for a bright future together. America’s public-health triumph of the 20th century gained us almost thirty years to extend and enrich our lives. To benefit fully from our longevity dividend, we must explore creative solutions to better engage older adults in our social and economic fabric while protecting those of us in our new old age from abuse and exploitation. In sum, abuse and exploitation comprise a 21st-century public health epidemic that debilitates society and the inherent potential of what will soon be a fifth (US Census Bureau) of our adult citizens. Older citizens are an untapped resource for society, but they are also a target for perpetrators, many within state guardianship systems.

To protect seniors’ net worth, self-worth, and lives, we go global. Our global is our year-round, 360-degree perimeter protection and care, fostered in communication and cooperation among our circles of support, cradled by trust.

Elder abuse is the betrayal of trust. Trust is most explicit in guardianship. It is also the trust most betrayed.

Elder justice is the promise of trust. Elder and justice are both forward-looking, as are promise and trust — individually, in sum, and in intention. Public health is forward-looking, too, with its emphasis on monitoring, effectiveness, and strategies toward prevention.

Elder justice is in its infancy compared to other realms that define our legal, ethical, and moral obligations. For humanity, elder justice can help complete, not compete, with, other causes, mindful of Hegel’s words (EB, 1999), paraphrased that,

“…the conflict is not between good and evil but between goods that are each making too exclusive a claim.”

Justice is not about just one cause or just another. Justice is inclusive and embracing coming full circle to become whole for society and for ourselves today and all along the way.

In memory of Mary Joy Quinn

This essay is dedicated to indefatigable, keen, caring Mary Joy Quinn (October 15, 1940 — January 23, 2024) who was director of the Probate Department, Superior Court of California, County of San Francisco, past president of the National College of Probate Judges, author of Guardianships of Adults: Achieving Justice, Autonomy, and Safety (2005), and so much more to so many colleagues.