By Angela Couloumbis
HARRISBURG
— The Pennsylvania Department of Aging oversees 52 county agencies
across the commonwealth, assessing them every year to ensure they comply
with state regulations for keeping older adults safe from abuse or
neglect.
But in 2021, it directed its small cadre of protective
services specialists to drop everything and focus on just one agency:
the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging.
The extraordinary step was
triggered by deep concerns among the department’s top officials over
PCA’s staffing shortages and delays in investigating cases.
For
the next nine months, state specialists worked around the clock to help
PCA handle investigations, including speeding up the timeline for
making contact with potential victims and providing them services to
minimize their risk of injury — or worse.
“It was an absolute
mess,” said Peter Hans, a former protective services specialist at the
Department of Aging who was assigned to assist Philadelphia. “It was so
distressing.”
Hans said he encountered cases that had remained
unresolved for over a year and ones in which an older adult had died
during an active investigation — yet PCA was unaware of the death.
Though aging officials say the agency has made improvements
since then, PCA continues to have the worst track record in the state
for complying with strict regulations meant to keep older adults safe
from harm, according to data obtained through public records requests.
Many
of its cases, the data show, aren’t investigated within the 20-day
state deadline. It has also failed annual compliance assessments by
state officials in five of seven recent years examined by Spotlight PA.
In the remaining two years, it wasn’t monitored at all.
Records
obtained by Spotlight PA through sources show problems ranging from poor
paperwork to failures to contact medical professionals to delays in
investigating cases.
In the meantime, deaths during open
investigations have steeply risen in recent years, and Philadelphia has
been particularly affected. In 2019, ’20 and ’21, nearly a third of
older adults who died statewide during open investigations lived in the
city and were being served by PCA.
Despite the help from state
protective services workers, PCA again failed its annual assessment in
2022. That year, the agency handled the case of Luen Ng, an ailing 75-year-old woman who died after her daughter spent months pleading for assistance.
Officials,
including those in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office, have not publicly
acknowledged failures in the state’s tattered system for keeping older
adults safe. The state Department of Aging can take punitive action
against agencies when they fail to meet safety standards, but has never
done so.
“That is too bad because this is solvable,” said Mark
Zecca, a Philadelphia lawyer who worked for years on federal social
services programs, and later for Philadelphia. “It needs leadership.”
Asked
if Shapiro was aware of the problems, a spokesperson said in an email:
“Will keep you posted on anything to add from our end.”
A
PCA spokesperson declined requests for comment for this story,
referring all questions to state aging officials. The chair of PCA’s
board of directors, Glenn Bryan, also declined to be interviewed.
Karen
Gray, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Aging, said in an
email that the agency is overseeing a corrective action plan for PCA.
She did not describe the plan — which generally requires a county aging
agency to list specific actions it will take to fix problems — but said
that protective services staffers at the agency are receiving extended
training.
The state, said Gray, has also provided technical
assistance that “has allowed PCA to hire more investigators, doubling
the number of investigators from as few as 26 to nearly 60, resulting in
reduced caseloads.”
PCA, a nonprofit that receives tens of
millions of taxpayer dollars every year, has also hired a private
contractor to help with its caseload, according to sources with direct
knowledge who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to
discuss the matter publicly.
The contractor, Service Access &
Management Inc., declined to comment about its contract with PCA, saying
it does not discuss its work with “stakeholders.”
Because PCA is
not a government-run agency, it is not subject to the state’s public
records law, and Spotlight PA could not obtain a copy of the contract.
Though
the Department of Aging funds PCA, it said it could not provide
information about the contract with Service Access & Management Inc.
For instance, state officials could not say whether they require PCA to
pay for the contract out of its annual state funding; or whether they
provide PCA with additional dollars to pay the private company — without
reducing PCA’s overall funding by that amount. If the latter, the state
would effectively be paying PCA twice for the same service.
Pressed
to explain why the department could not comment, Gray would only say:
“We do not have information pertaining to AAA subcontractors, nor can we
comment on actions taken regarding the reasons for their hiring, or
contract termination.”
The state allocated $343 million for the 52 county aging agencies this fiscal year; PCA received $65 million of that total.
In its last federal tax filing,
which covers 2022, PCA reported $76.8 million in revenue from grants
and contributions, the majority of it from federal, state and local
sources. State-specific funding largely comes from Pennsylvania lottery
earnings.
During its last annual audit, from June 2023, auditors found “significant deficiencies” in certain internal controls and financial reporting requirements.
Zecca
said there is little incentive for PCA or any county aging agency to
change if the Department of Aging just hands over money on “a silver
platter,” with no accountability. State officials could provide that
incentive by allocating a portion of PCA’s funding to another social
services entity that could do a better job.
“They have to say, ‘If
you are not in compliance, you will lose a part of your funding, and we
will give it to another entity who can provide that service,’ ” Zecca
said. “You don’t want to lose another part of your funding? Be
compliant.”
Hans, the former state protective services specialist,
said he made that exact recommendation to his superiors after working
with PCA in 2021 and ’22. The agency’s caseload, he said, was alarmingly
high, as was the number of open cases of abuse and neglect — PCA was
simply unable to deal with it, leaving older adults at risk.
In
2021, when the Department of Aging swooped in to help PCA, nearly 40% of
older Philadelphians who died that year had cases open for six months
or longer — more than three times the limit imposed by state rules —
without a determination by PCA about whether they were being neglected
or abused.
“I told them I would divide Philly up by ZIP code, and
then I would number those zones, and I would reduce PCA’s block grant by
giving those zones to a surrounding county or a private entity,” Hans
said.
His plea, he said, was ignored.
Hans retired from his
state position last summer. Since then, he has contacted legislators,
the Pennsylvania offices of inspector general, attorney general and
auditor general, and Shapiro’s office, among others, to sound the alarm.
He said he has been exasperated by the inaction.
“People are dying,” he said. “What else is it going to take?”
Full Article & Source:
Deaths during elder abuse investigations rose in Pa.’s largest city as state regulators took no punitive action
