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By Paula Span
During a recent Zoom conference call, four Adult Protective Services workers from California, using a tool called the Interview for Decisional Abilities, or IDA, were trying to figure out whether something fishy was going on with an 82-year-old woman they knew as Ms. K.
Adult Protective Services agencies in every state receive reports of possible neglect, self-neglect, abuse or exploitation of older people and other vulnerable adults. But agency workers consistently face a bedeviling question: Does the adult in question have the capacity to make a decision about their medical care, living conditions or finances — even if it’s not the decision that the family, doctor or financial adviser thinks should be made?
IDA was developed by two geriatricians to help train Adult Protective Services workers in how to handle that issue. The program helps them learn to use a structured interview procedure to gather information about a client’s decision-making ability. The two dozen California staff members taking the course had already completed 10 hours of individual online instruction; now they were practicing their new interviewing skills in small groups, role-playing with facilitators.
Ms. K, a fictional character, was being played by Bess White, a special projects administrator at Weill Cornell Medicine. In the scenario, a bank manager had reported certain suspicions: Ms. K had $60,000 in a savings account but her withdrawals had increased sharply, from $600 a month to $600 a week. A younger man — her nephew, she said — had begun accompanying her to the bank, where a teller thought the man had seemed controlling and intimidating. An investigator who visited Ms. K at home learned that her only credit card had expired and that she had little cash.
But Ms. K denied being financially exploited; her nephew lived with her, she said, and helped with chores and rides to doctor’s appointments. He used the bank withdrawals to buy their groceries.
In the exercise, one of the A.P.S. trainees had ascertained that Ms. K grasped the basic concept of financial exploitation. Ms. K had heard about scams from the news, she said. And yes, she understood that a friend or relative might similarly take advantage.
So the interviewer continued: “What do you think could happen if someone took another person’s money without their permission?”
Ms.
White, in the role of Ms. K, replied: “I guess the person could take it
and take it until there’s nothing left.” But when the interviewer
probed further to see if Ms. K understood that she herself might be
facing this risk, she balked. She relied on her nephew, Ms. K said; she
didn’t want to upset him. (Click to continue reading)
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