Pa. must tighten laws to prevent elder abuse
No older adult should ever be subjected to injury, violence, neglect, abuse, exploitation or abandonment at the hands of another. Since 1987, the Older Adults Protective Services Act has served as Pennsylvania’s system for protecting the health, safety, and welfare of older adults who are at imminent risk of these serious offenses.
Since I began serving as Secretary of Aging in 2019, improving our protective services function has been a top priority. No one, especially legislators, has ever indicated, in any way, that we should not be doing more to serve and protect our seniors, especially those who are most vulnerable. In fact, it is quite the opposite.
Yet, after more than a decade of calls from the Department of Aging, stakeholders, and the courts on the critical need to update and strengthen OAPSA, the General Assembly has not acted.
We finally need to see legislative action to adequately address changes in our direct care workforce, the facilities that serve older adults, and the rise of financial exploitation as a form of elder abuse.
Specifically, the law urgently needs to be amended to definitively identify individuals who should not be allowed to work as a caregiver to older adults. The current statutory prohibitions addressing this issue were determined to be unconstitutional in 2015 by the Commonwealth Court.
It was the court’s intention that OAPSA be amended to achieve greater clarity of the rights of all parties involved in the employment process, particularly when someone is denied the opportunity to work as a caregiver.
Caregivers provide services to older adults in vulnerable situations, such as dressing and bathing, and have access to important and valuable personally identifiable information. As part of the proposed changes to OAPSA, the department strongly supports strengthening background checks for all employees, both new and current, who work with older adults in a long-term care setting.
The department is also advocating to expand the list of mandatory reporters of abuse, and facilities whose employees are required to report abuse. The additions to the list of mandatory reporters would include care options that did not exist in 1987 when the law was first enacted — such as home health, hospice, and assisted living.
This expansion will provide a more robust network to report elder abuse and increase protection for older adults.
Since OAPSA became our statutory guide, nearly 35 years ago, to protecting older Pennsylvanians, the volume, type, and scope of abuse has increased dramatically as noted in the department’s 2020-21 Older Adults Protective Services Annual Report. Reports of suspected elder abuse increased 63% over the previous five years.
There has also been a marked increase in financial exploitation as a form of elder abuse. Findings from a financial exploitation study of older adults in Pennsylvania, released in September 2020 by our department, concluded that amending OAPSA would help increase awareness of how financial exploitation is committed, encourage financial institutions to voluntarily report suspected financial exploitation and grant financial providers and Area Agencies on Aging the ability to share information and records related to cases of exploitation.
There is a great deal of excellent work happening to address elder abuse, in partnership with the department, local Area Agencies on Aging and stakeholders, but all of our work could be much more impactful with the full strength of an updated protective services law.
Yet somehow, despite lawmakers’ vocal concern for the protection of older adults, the General Assembly can’t seem to get there.
Pennsylvania is home to more than 3 million adults over 60 years old, and this figure is projected to increase to 4 million in 8 years, nearly 30% of our state’s population. Older Pennsylvanians deserve the protection of a law that addresses issues affecting them today and that strengthens the department’s ability to effectively provide those protections.
As the department responsible for advocacy and protection of our state’s older adults, the Department of Aging urges the General Assembly to commit to amending OAPSA as one of its top priorities in the remaining months of the 2021-22 legislative session.
We need action to be taken by the House Aging and Older Adult Services Committee on Representative Hennessey’s House Bill 1681 and similar legislation needs to be championed in the Senate so that these updates can finally be accomplished.
For all of the older adults we serve and care about in Pennsylvania, let’s get this done now.