Financial Literacy 101 – Workshop Facilitator’s Guide

The subject of the Protect Yourself! workshops is financial literacy and financial abuse of older adults. The goal of these workshops is to provide older adults with the information they need to protect their finances, recognize and respond to financial abuse, access community resources for further information or assistance, and make informed financial decisions that meet their needs. “Financial literacy” means having the knowledge to prevent, recognize and respond to financial abuse.

Protect Yourself! Financial Literacy  is composed of two workshops:

Module 1: Powers of Attorney & Joint Accounts

Module 2: Frauds, Scams & Telemarketing

Financial Literacy 102

Financial Literacy 102 has been created as a general overview for professionals who work with older adults. The FL102 materials also include a series of videos on the topics covered in this manual. These videos  are available on the disc that accompanies this manual.

The purpose of this guidebook is to enhance your own knowledge in relation to financial abuse of older adults as well as financial literacy and financial planning for older adults. This publication is also intended to serve as a tool for in-house teaching of staff and volunteers.

It is important that all professionals who deliver services to older adults learn to recognize elder abuse and neglect and identify how they should respond to concerns regarding abuse and neglect in the context of their own practice. However, specific competency based educational modules need to be developed for each professional group. This is especially true for all levels of responsibility within the financial sector, ranging from consumer-facing staff to internal management positions. Your organization may have polices or procedures in place regarding elder abuse and neglect. We encourage you to become familiar with those documents.

This publication reflects the law on June 1, 2010.