Resources

This page holds the phone numbers, agencies, and plain-English explanations that California families ask for most often. Everything is on the page itself. Nothing is hidden behind a search box or a menu.

Most older adults are not abused. And when something is wrong, noticing it early usually makes it easier to sort out. You do not have to be certain before you make a call.

If you need help now

The right number depends on the situation. Here is how the six most common ones are handled in California. If you reach the wrong office, the staff there will usually point you to the right one.

You do not need proof, and you do not need to be certain. A reasonable concern is enough. Reports can be made anonymously.

Understanding elder abuse

Elder abuse is harm done to an older adult by someone they should be able to trust — a family member, a caregiver, a friend, or a paid professional. It also covers situations where an older person is no longer able to care for themselves safely. Most definitions apply to people aged 60 and over. In California, protective services also cover dependent adults aged 18 to 59.

Agencies and researchers group elder abuse into seven categories. Naming them is useful, because families often recognize a situation once it has a name, and because the category can change who you call. These categories follow the National Center on Elder Abuse’s definitions of elder mistreatment.

• Physical. The intentional use of physical force or physical coercion that may result in bodily injury, physical pain, or impairment.
• Emotional or psychological. Anguish, pain, or distress caused through verbal or nonverbal acts, including insults, threats, intimidation, humiliation, isolation, and harassment.
• Financial. The illegal or improper use of an older person’s funds, property, or assets. The examples include misusing or taking someone’s money or possessions, pressuring a person into signing a contract or a will, and improper use of a power of attorney, guardianship, or conservatorship.
• Neglect. The refusal or failure to fulfill a duty of care to an older adult, including but not limited to life necessities.
• Abandonment. Deserting an older adult, by someone who had physical custody of them or who had taken on responsibility for their care.
• Sexual. Non-consensual sexual contact of any kind, including sexual contact with an older person who lacks the capacity to give consent.
• Self-neglect. An older person’s own behavior threatening their health or safety, including the refusal or failure to provide themselves with life necessities. This is the category families are most surprised to learn Adult Protective Services handles.

Harm is often unintentional. Caregiving is hard, and someone who is exhausted, unwell, or unsure what a person needs can cause real harm without meaning to. That matters, because in many cases a report brings in support and services. Punishment is not the usual outcome.

Recognizing warning signs

There is rarely one single sign that tells you something is wrong. More often it is a pattern, or a change from how someone normally is. A useful question is: has something changed, and does the explanation fit? A bruise with a plausible explanation is just a bruise. A run of injuries with explanations that keep shifting is worth a closer look. The same logic applies to money and to mood.

Families tend to notice a change first in one of these areas:

• Daily care. Unmet needs for food, water, clean clothing, or medicine. Untreated medical conditions. Living conditions that have become unsafe or unsanitary.
• Mood and contact. New fearfulness or withdrawal. Less contact with friends and family. A caregiver who will not leave the person alone with visitors.
• Money. Unexplained withdrawals or transfers. A new person suddenly involved in money decisions. Pressure to sign documents. Unpaid bills despite enough income. Changes to a will, a deed, or a power of attorney that the older person cannot clearly explain.

These points are general guidance from the Foundation, written to follow the behaviors described on the National Center on Elder Abuse’s page on identifying abuse. They are not a diagnostic checklist, and no agency publishes one.

None of these signs prove that abuse is happening. Many have ordinary explanations: bruising from a blood thinner, weight loss from an illness, withdrawal that comes from depression or from losing hearing. A warning sign does not mean abuse. It means the question is worth asking.

Start with a conversation. If the concern is still there afterwards, make the call. Working out what happened is the job of the people you are calling, not yours.

Elder neglect

Neglect is defined by what does not happen. The National Center on Elder Abuse describes it as “the refusal or failure to fulfill any part of a person’s obligations or duties of care to an elder which include, but are not limited to, life necessities.” In practice that means food, water, clothing, shelter, hygiene, medicine, and medical care.

Neglect can happen at home, where a family caregiver is overwhelmed, unwell, or simply does not know what the person needs. It can also happen in a facility that is short-staffed. It rarely looks like cruelty, which is part of why it can go unnamed for a long time.

Self-neglect is a separate situation, and a recognized category: “the behavior of an older person that threatens their own health or safety, including but not limited to the refusal or failure to provide themselves with life necessities.” It often follows dementia, depression, illness, or long stretches of isolation. Adult Protective Services in California responds to self-neglect as well, because the program serves adults who cannot meet their own needs, not only those being harmed by someone else.

Where the person lives decides who you call. Neglect at home goes to Adult Protective Services at 1-833-401-0832. Neglect in a licensed facility goes to the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Hotline at 1-800-231-4024, and to the agency that licenses that facility.

Reporting neglect is not the same as accusing someone of a crime. In many cases the outcome is services and support that were missing.

Safety and prevention

Most of what keeps an older adult safe is ordinary: staying connected to other people, planning ahead while decisions are still easy to make, and making sure more than one trusted person can see how things are going.

Isolation is the thread that runs through most elder abuse. The National Center on Elder Abuse states on its page on preventing elder abuse that “Low social support is a significant risk factor,” and it recommends building connections through social, community, or faith networks. That is the most hopeful part of this whole subject: contact protects people.

Planning ahead works for the same reason. Advance directives, powers of attorney, and supported decision-making agreements — arrangements where a person keeps the final say but has help understanding the choices — protect people when they are set up early and freely chosen. The same documents become a route to financial abuse when they are signed in a hurry, under pressure, at a moment of crisis. Decide early, involve more than one person, and revisit the arrangement as things change.

Supporting a caregiver is prevention too. Respite, meals, transportation, and a support group all lower the chance that care breaks down. Your county’s Area Agency on Aging is the place to start. The California Department of Aging’s county service finder lists one for each of the 58 counties.

A few habits worth building, offered as the Foundation’s general guidance rather than as advice for any one situation:

• Keep a second set of trusted eyes on the finances.
• Turn on text or email alerts for bank and card accounts.
• Take time over any large money decision. Pressure to act immediately is a common feature of scams.
• Find out who your county’s Area Agency on Aging is before you need them.
• Keep contact regular. A standing phone call or a weekly visit is a safeguard as well as a kindness.

How reporting works in California

California routes reports by where the person lives. That is the whole rule, and it is the part families most often get wrong.

• Anyone in immediate danger. Call 911 first.
• Living in the community — their own home, an apartment, a relative’s house, or in a hospital. Call Adult Protective Services at 1-833-401-0832, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, routed to your county by ZIP code.
• Living in a licensed care setting — a nursing home, assisted living, board and care, a residential care facility for the elderly, an adult day program, a rehabilitation center, or an intermediate care facility. Call the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Hotline at 1-800-231-4024, 24 hours a day, or the local police or sheriff’s department.

Regulatory complaints follow a different path, and which agency you want depends on the type of facility. Nursing homes and hospitals are the Department of Public Health. Assisted living, board and care, and adult day programs are the Department of Social Services, at the Community Care Licensing complaint line, 1-844-538-8766. Medi-Cal fraud, and abuse or neglect of residents in long-term care, can also go to the California Department of Justice at the Division of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse, (800) 722-0432.

Adult Protective Services and the Ombudsman work alongside each other, not instead of each other. Someone who calls the wrong one is generally passed along to the right program. Worrying about calling the wrong number keeps people from calling at all, and it should not.

Worth repeating: a reasonable concern is enough, and reports can be made anonymously.

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Directory of organizations

Every number and link below was checked against each organization’s own website in August 2026.

California

What the Foundation can and cannot do

The California Elder Abuse Prevention Foundation is not a government agency. It cannot investigate a report, inspect a facility, or step into a case. The agencies listed on this page can, and they are the right first call.

For questions about the Foundation itself, the contact page is the place to send them. Please do not use it to report abuse. A message sent to us does not reach anyone who can act on it, and the numbers above do.