1: Introduction to Multidisciplinary Teams

Working in unison, the strength of each agency can complement the others. Rather than each MDT partner working in a silo to serve older adults who have experienced abuse, an MDT can hold those individuals as a mutual client. Together, the agencies involved in the MDT can ensure that their clients do not fall through the cracks in the system (or systemic gaps) while addressing their range of needs. An MDT allows each agency’s strengths to shine, while sharing the burden of investigating and responding to complex elder abuse cases. For example, some older adults are distrustful of law enforcement, but law enforcement may be better able than APS to collect the evidence needed to forward a case to the criminal justice system. APS may be better able to empathize, build rapport and communicate with the client to ensure needed services are being offered. Furthermore, team members are able to provide support to one another, which may reduce the secondary trauma effects associated with these difficult cases. Ideally, the net result is a better outcome for older survivors of elder abuse. 

Agencies that work collaboratively can produce better solutions for their clients, MDT members, and the community.  

Remote video URL

View The Value of Participating on Elder Abuse Multidisciplinary Teams (1 hour 15 min), featuring the Montgomery County Elder Abuse Team discussing the value of MDTs and performing a mock case review.

Successful partnerships can benefit MDT clients in the following ways:

• Conducting various in-home evaluations and interviews as a team lessens the burden of multiple interviews, while simultaneously gathering information on needed services for older survivors as well as evidence for possible prosecution.
• An MDT enhances the probability that no matter where a person enters the system, they have access to coordinated services.
• Older adults may receive concurrent services by many disciplines, and coordination of these services may reduce the number of systems they have to navigate.
• Collaboration promotes greater awareness of available services, and improves access to and receipt of services for MDT clients.
• Coordination creates an integrated array of services tailored to the individual’s multifaceted needs that can build upon the strengths of their support system.
• Collaboration produces creative solutions that no one agency could produce on its own.
• Working as an MDT provides informal social supports, enhanced monitoring, follow-up beyond the crisis period, potentially reducing the recurrence of elder abuse.

Successful partnerships can benefit MDT members in the following ways:

• Working collaboratively benefits each agency represented on the MDT, by building stronger professional relationships across agencies and disciplines, and facilitating more efficient case review by bringing professionals together to discuss and coordinate their response.
• Collaboration facilitates more effective and positive outcomes for clients by allowing each profession to focus on their specific role. For example, if health care professionals need to spend time being a social worker, then fewer medical needs may be attended to. But, if someone else can do the social work, then health care professionals can focus on the client’s medical needs.
• Responsibility for a case (ensuring safety, permanency, and well-being) is shared among the MDT members. This not only lends greater confidence to team members regarding case planning, but it may reduce liability risks due to the input of high-level agency representatives and qualified medical and legal consultants brought in where appropriate.  
• Decisions regarding the client are better informed and reviewed prior to implementation.
• Every agency has legal and policy restrictions on their response to elder abuse. Understanding what each agency can and cannot do can relieve tensions between agencies that can occur when service expectations do not match with an agency’s role.

Through exposure to different disciplines, team members:

• Learn each other’s mandates and jargon.
• Broaden and enrich their understanding of elder abuse.  
• Sharpen their professional skills to better manage and build cases.
• Access the pool of experts on the MDT to obtain assistance in resolving difficult cases.
• Learn how other professionals in the community handle similar situations thereby bolstering MDT members’ confidence.
• Instill confidence that the case is being handled the best way possible when they obtain validation from other team members.
• Enhance job satisfaction by promoting collegiality and motivation, while supporting one another by providing a safe place to vent frustration, relieve tension, and share feelings of helplessness.
• Extend and leverage interagency resources by reducing the financial and staff burden on individual agencies.
• Look to another team member if their agency does not have the resources a client needs.
• Identify service gaps and make system changes.
• Improve the ability of agencies to share information and track clients across agencies.
• Engage in group decision-making, thereby making fewer errors (potentially reducing legal risk).
• Back each other up, by explaining the importance of various disciplines to their client.    

Successful partnerships can benefit communities in the following ways:

• Providing a forum for balancing the interests and perspectives of professionals from diverse disciplines, clients, and society through collaboration and coordination.
• Enhancing relationships among public and private service providers.
• Creating community responsibility for the safety of older adults.
• Strengthening families and other support systems, which strengthens communities.
• Creating a mechanism for raising awareness about elder abuse in the community.
• Creating a mechanism for hearing from a community about their needs through needs assessments and community partnerships.
• Extending the reach of limited resources within a community by creating a network of agencies who can build on their relationships to address related issues.