Tuesday, November 19, 2019

SPECIAL REPORT | Unguarded: How Richmond’s guardianship process leaves vulnerable people unprotected



Guardianship, the legal process of taking away an adult’s rights to make life decisions, is intended to protect vulnerable people from neglect and abuse.

In Richmond, VCU Health System and other health care providers have used the process to remove poor patients from hospital beds, sometimes against the wishes of family members, with the help of a local law firm.

A year-long Richmond Times-Dispatch investigation has found that what happens to the patients after they’re discharged is left up to a system that fails to provide the one justification for the power it wields – protection.

Ora Lomax felt in her bones that her husband of 63 years would die that day.
Four days before Christmas, something in William Lomax had changed. He was praying and singing “This Little Light of Mine” and “Jesus Loves Me.”

He must have felt death, she thought.

She couldn’t stand to see it happen. But before she left him, he squeezed her hand and told her he loved her for the last time.

Just three months earlier, he’d been living with her in their small home near Virginia Union University. Ever since a car accident in 2016 left William, 87, with a brain injury, Ora, also 87, needed help from 24-hour home health aides to take care of him. She couldn’t change him or help him out of bed because of her own physical limitations, but she was there to make sure the aides did.

He’d spent his final weeks in a nursing home where Ora said she frequently found him unwashed, cold and begging for water. He’d become agitated and inconsolable.

He was angry with her for leaving him in this place.

“You have forsaken me,” he told her.

He didn’t understand that she had no choice.


Full Article & Source:
SPECIAL REPORT | Unguarded: How Richmond’s guardianship process leaves vulnerable people unprotected

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