Former AG continues quest for adult guardianship office

BOSTON — Eighteen years after leaving office, former Attorney General Scott Harshbarger is asking lawmakers to pick up an unfinished piece of the reforms he sought around elder protection and adult guardianship.

Harshbarger on Monday asked the Judiciary Committee to throw its support behind a bill that would establish a state office of adult guardianship as a public-private partnership that would handle the appointment of guardians for adults who cannot make their own legal decisions and lack family, friends or access to volunteers who could step into the role.

The office would serve “the poor and the powerless,” Harshbarger said, including people who are elderly and intellectually or developmentally disabled.

Harshbarger, who became attorney general in 1991 and left office in 1999 after an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, said creation of such an office has been proposed for years.

“The missing piece in it has been how would we fund this,” Harshbarger said. “We happen to propose an innovative way — nonprofit funding. All we’re asking for is that the state agency have oversight and a nonprofit agency will be the office of the public guardian, supported by public funding.”

Rep. Paul Brodeur’s bill (H 3027) would set up an office within the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to supervise a privately funded nonprofit that would provide guardianship services.

Brodeur, a Melrose Democrat, said the office would serve between 4,100 and 4,700 people in Massachusetts who “truly have no one but the Legislature and advocacy groups to fall back on for help.”

He said such people may need legal decisions made on their behalf when being discharged from a hospital or admitted to a nursing facility.

“There’s no one in some cases that can speak with legal authority for that person,” Brodeur said.

“What does that mean? It very often means that the hospital or the provider will have to go into court, find a guardian and make arrangements to put that decision into force. That usually happens in a time, essentially, of crisis.”

Peter Macy, the executive director of Guardian Community Trust, said the bill proposes a “radical new way to fund guardianship,” and 60 percent of the necessary private funding has already been pledged.

He said a business plan has been developed calling for approximately $800,000 annually in private dollars to “entirely fund the operational side of a public guardian,” leaving the state’s cost at around $400,000 for a supervisory office with between three and five staff members.

“Creating the office of public guardian is critical,” Macy told the committee. “We must have it. We cannot get the private dollars without your help to create a tiny government office.”

Full Article & Source:
Former AG continues quest for adult guardianship office