Older people can become victims of abuse by someone they know and whom they depend on, such as family, friends or professional caregivers. Elder abuse is not always intentional, sometimes it is due to care falling short. Conducting a study to explore the prevalence of elder abuse is difficult. Commissioned by the Dutch State Secretary for Health, Welfare and Sport, the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) has brought together the current knowledge on this topic using the most recent data drawn from qualitative research, surveys of older persons, professionals and volunteers, and record data. The sources together do not produce an unambiguous picture of the actual number of victims in the Netherlands. All sources produce far lower figures than the estimated 200,000 based on a study of twenty years ago. The numbers found depend strongly on the research method and definition of the phenomenon.

Two approaches have dominated the way elder abuse is explained and defined: the intrapersonal and interpersonal approaches. More recently, an environmental approach is emerging that takes into account contextual factors. This approach also meets the perspectives of older individuals themselves better. They describe how they feel abused or neglected by the system – by the way in which we organize our institutions. Institutions mirror our society and are shaped in interaction with societal norms and expectations. This influences the way in which older individuals are looked upon, are being approached, and how they see themselves within these institutions. This system abuse is currently beyond the scope of the most commonly used definitions and approaches of elder abuse. However, it is important to acknowledge system abuse, because it makes explicit how older individuals feel abused by and within our institutions. The distress and harm that they experience can therewith be acknowledged and prevented.

Integration is an essential element of refugee protection. This article presents data on the socio-economic integration of refugees in the Netherlands who have received a residence status between 2000 and 2010. Many refugees are unable to integrate successfully into the Dutch labor market, which results in high levels of welfare dependency and poverty. The article furthermore discusses developments in Dutch integration policies, with a specific focus on civic integration, family reunification and citizenship. These policies are increasingly characterized by imposing more stringent requirements on migrants as a precondition for obtaining permanent residency and citizenship. As such, these policy developments prove to be counterproductive to refugee integration in the Netherlands. A brief comparison between the Netherlands on the one hand and Denmark, the United Kingdom and Belgium/Flanders on the other, shows that the Netherlands pursue a particularly severe course with regard to imposing integration requirements on refugees.