摘要：A specific old-age home in a semi-urban area of South Africa delivers certain community outreach services besides the services to the inmates of the old-age home. A team of registered nurses have been delivering these home-care services since 2002, including physical care, a meal service and a transport service to clinics and hospitals. The profile of the elderly persons living in this specific community shows that they are mostly women, black and very poor. While rendering services to the aged persons in the community, staff members realised that especially the frail aged have very little finances to spend on their own keeping, although they all receive an old-age pension. This raised the question of possible neglect and financial abuse by their caregivers and other people, which in turn led to this specific research project. This article reports on an attempt to investigate the housing circumstances and the financial position of the participants, as well as determining whether they could account for their expenditure, the items that the pension was spent on, the point of payment of the pension, the accompanying person and the manner in which withdrawal of money took place. Furthermore, the investigation included whether participants cared for children, topics of interest for grandparents caring for children, and the physical appearance of participants.
