The audit on PA’s Department of Aging is worrisome for those with elderly loved ones

by Anthony Panasiewicz 

CHAMBERSBURG – The Pennsylvania Auditor General recently took a hard look at the Pennsylvania Department of Aging and the results were more than a little surprising.

The audit found weaknesses in how the department monitors elder abuse investigations performed by Area Agencies on Aging and how it trains front-line staff.

There have been some questions brought up as to when the audit was actually performed. Was this done in a transition period in the department, or is there something bigger happening here?

Attorney Clint Barkdoll explained, “The Auditor General Tim DeFoor’s office, they do these performance audits of various programs around the state at the state and local level. Anyone that’s receiving state money is subject to this, but it is a little complicated because there’s layers of these organizations.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Aging at the state level oversees all of the Area Agencies on Aging. There are 52 of them around the state.

Barkdoll continued, “They are operated at the local level, and this audit found that there were weaknesses in how these local agencies were monitoring elder abuse investigations, and therein lies the problem. If you look through the report, the monitoring that would oversee this, there’s just a lot of loopholes, deadlines that were missed. A lot of these investigations are in the context of financial exploitation of an elderly person, and (the Auditor General is) claiming that those were not done not only in a timely manner but just in an effective manner at all. So I would imagine at the state level now, in light of this report, there’s going to be some new rules and new training, new tightening of procedures that will have to flow down to all these local county offices.”

Pat Ryan of News Talk 103.7FM asked, “Who gets held accountable for it? Nobody, and there’ll be some finger pointing, and then there will be some new rules in place, but if someone has fallen through the cracks, where’s the restoration for that individual or that family?”

Michele Jansen of News Talk 103.7FM said, “This is the problem we’re seeing all over the place: accountability, accountability, accountability. Unless you have something in there that’s going to have an impact for when you’re not accountable, it’s hard to get that accountability. So I hope that there’s some changes, maybe some legislative work, or definitely some work within these departments. Things have just been overlooked for too long, and it just becomes a growing problem. The more you ignore it, the worse it gets. I hope this is a good catalyst to get some great examination of what’s going on and real accountability.”

Barkdoll added, “It is troubling in the report at the state level, DeFoor is alleging that the state Department of Aging stalled the release of this finding by about six months, and he’s also claiming that there was not good cooperation from agency or these local offices in providing names of key employees, management processes, and and that’s problematic and troublesome in and of itself.”

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The audit on PA’s Department of Aging is worrisome for those with elderly loved ones