Our 2024 year’s winner was Bridget Penhale, an Emerita Reader at the University of East Anglia.
Bridget is a long-standing BSG member, a long-standing social worker specialising in older people, and has also been actively engaged in gerontological research for many decades. Although Bridget has worked in a range of areas it was for her pioneering work on elder abuse that the nomination was made. Bridget has been instrumental in bringing this subject to the fore of practice and policy thinking, and her work laid the foundations for concerted efforts to raise public and professional interest in the subject and to offer help to those affected. This led to the support of Age Concern England for the development of Action on Elder Abuse (AEA) (now the Hourglass charity). Bridget led the first Department of Health (DH) funded study on adult protection (2004-2007). This contributed to a broadened focus on adult safeguarding (not just elder abuse). Her work is reflected in policy and legislation (e.g. the Care Act 2014) as well as practice.
Bridget’s research contributions on elder abuse are particularly noteworthy as are her impacts on policy, for example she has acted as an advisor to the European Commission and World Health Organisation on the subject as well as to UK and other governments. Bridget was a founding member of the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA), which has recently been working closely with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People on trying to secure a un convention on the rights of older persons. She has represented INPEA at the United Nations.
The award was made to mark and congratulate Bridget in her long commitment to advocacy and scholarship on the subject of elder abuse. She has championed the need for action at policy and practice levels here in the UK and internationally and we think a very worthy recipient of the Society’s Outstanding Achievement Award.
Professor Carol Holland
BSG President and Panel Member