Many relatives responsibly care for elderly loved ones, but some are grossly irresponsible or even criminal. There are people who open their homes, wallets, and rearrange their schedule to tackle the task with love and lots of patience. Others are physically, emotionally, or financially unable to provide needed care. Yet many are simply unconcerned, unwilling, or unloving. Regardless, all seniors need adequate care solutions where they can spend their final declining years.
Nearly 5 million seniors are victims of elder abuse and robbed of up to $3 billion annually. Unlicensed care homes thrive because of abusive family members, but also the countless number of predators in our society who receive great pleasure in taking advantage of anyone. Some unlicensed care homes may provide adequate care for their vulnerable clients; yet others gruesomely abuse and rob their clients. A few have similarities to the Nazi concentration camps of the 1940s.
While the state provides health and safety standards for licensing personal care homes, unlicensed care homes remain without critically needed oversight. Research indicates that unlicensed care homes may cost less, but the quality of care often declines with the reduced cost.
It is very difficult for state, county and local officials to locate, inspect, and shut down unlicensed care homes because some use varying names and offer varying services in order to skirt the law. The most despicable unlicensed facility operator might hang sheets from the ceiling to partition off a single room in order to sleep 6, 8, 10, or more elderly clients, some on the floor.
One unlicensed Florida care facility fed residents frozen dinners that cost 88 cents each. The operator of that facility tied one elderly resident to a chair, claiming it was necessary because the elderly resident might fall as a result of recent hip surgery.
A Michigan township discovered an unlicensed care home after responding to a fire in a 1,500 square-foot house. Firefighters found four elderly women burned in their beds and the remains of another located on the floor under the kitchen table where she slept. The house had no smoke alarms or sprinklers.
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If our government has so much hi-tech capability, why can't they search out these creatures that run these awful facilities and close them down?
Because, Thelma, they can't even keep track of the so-called licensed facilities.
It is a crime and a shame the conditions that these government agencies not only tolerate, but actively fund and cover up.
To wit, the Virginia Department for Aging and Rehabilitative Services, which enabled public guardianship programs under its "supervision" and "oversight" to dump victims into Scott Schuett's six dangerous, disgusting adult homes with 400 people, then through its attorneys, Janet James, Esquire and Amy Marschean, Esquire, actively covered up and lied about DARS' involvement, even going so far as to maliciously defame the lone attorney with the ethics to shed light on these appalling conditions.
To wit, the Virginia Department of Social Services, which not only dragged its feet for seventeen agonizing months after Scott Schuett was publicly declared a substantial danger to the public health and safety, but actually FUNDED 90% (NINETY PERCENT!) of placements in Scott Schuett's hellholes through it auxiliary grant program.
To wit, the Virginia Attorney General's Office, which constructed bogus excuse after bogus excuse for its failure to use its clear statutory authority to shut these places down in fifteen days, instead actively participating in Scott Schuett's systematic obstruction of justice for these hapless victims, who continued to suffer deprivation, neglect, abuse, even death while the cases dragged on and on.
To add insult to grievous injury, the Virginia Attorney General's Office then blatantly ignored its clear-cut duty TO REPORT SCOTT SCHUETT TO THE BAR. As a consequence, to this very day, this miscreant retains the option of returning to his home state and HANGING OUT A SHINGLE AS AN ELDER LAW ATTORNEY, a frightening prospect for all of his future victims.
Gail Nardi, the head of Adult Protective Services for the Commonwealth of Virginia, summed up the attitude of state government officials and agencies toward this entirely avoidable problem when she blithely told the Virginia Public Guardian and Conservator Advisory Board that "only 20%" of adult abuse and neglect occurs in facilities. ONLY TWENTY PERCENT!!!
Ladies and gentlemen, when innocent aging and disabled citizens are MORE SAFE if your public jobs and public agencies are put out of business, you have some serious 'splainin' to do.
It strikes me that after years of the nursing home reform movement, that we should be further along. It's disheartening.
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