Our mission is to ensure that every older person affected by abuse has access to the help they need to live the life they choose. Toward this end, we design, deliver and evaluate elder abuse prevention, detection and intervention programs that become a permanent part of Maine’s aging services landscape. 

 

Our work first began in 1994 when we established a multi-disciplinary coalition called PEACE that was dedicated to addressing the needs of elder abuse victims in Portland. In 2013, this coalition recognized the need for our work to expand statewide and we established ourselves as a nonprofit organization, the Elder Abuse Institute of Maine. After years of advocacy work on behalf of older Mainers, in 2010 we secured federal funding to open Maine’s first housing designed specifically for victims of elder abuse, Martha’s Cottage, in Portland.

 

After years as a volunteer-run organization, in 2016, we again recognized the need to expand our services and more formally establish our infrastructure and we hired our first staff person, who is our current Executive Director. Since then, we have:

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• Received private funding to purchase property to expand our transitional housing footprint to Northern Maine and Midcoast Maine;

• Expanded our services to include elder service coordination through a unique partnership with the State of Maine;

• Formalized our outreach and education efforts through dedicated staff and robust multi-disciplinary partnerships;

• Launched a research project through a three-year fellowship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study mandatory reporting; and,

• We launched A Helping Voice line to assist in detecting and reporting abuse.

 

We have 15 staff and 10 Board members.