by Angela Couloumbis
 |
| Pennsylvania Department of Aging Secretary Jason Kavulich speaks during a
multidisciplinary protective services training session on June 30,
2025, in Harrisburg, Pa. The event brought together representatives from
23 Area Agencies on Aging, the Office of Attorney General, and national
experts to enhance oversight, transparency, and coordination in elder
protection services. The training reflects the Shapiro Administration’s
commitment to strengthening accountability and improving outcomes for
older adults across the Commonwealth. |
HARRISBURG — In November, Pennsylvania Department of Aging Secretary Jason Kavulich found himself in the hot seat.
He was testifying before a legislative committee on his department’s
oversight of 52 county-based Area Agencies on Aging that protect
vulnerable older adults from abuse or neglect.
Reading from prepared remarks, Kavulich asserted that under his
watch, the department has ushered in an era of modernization and change.
He said the system his agency now uses to determine the quality of
protective services is more accountable and gives real-time feedback so
any problems can be speedily fixed. He also testified that the
department is the most transparent it has ever been, saying that it
places an unprecedented amount of data on its website about whether
counties are following state requirements for quickly and efficiently
investigating abuse and neglect allegations — and keeping older adults
safe.
The reality is far more nuanced.
Over the past 18 months, a Spotlight PA investigation has revealed
persistent flaws within Pennsylvania’s safety net for older adults. The
reporting highlighted how delays, secrecy, and government inaction have
left older Pennsylvanians vulnerable to abuse, neglect, and even death.
Many of those older adults lack financial resources for alternative
care or a network of family and friends to watch out for them — they
rely on the system to remain safe.
Protective services work is emotionally and physically taxing. Many
caseworkers juggle high workloads, often for little money. Turnover is
high, making it difficult to retain qualified, experienced people. Even
the most hardened critics of the state’s protective services system
acknowledge the difficulty of the work.
Still, new data show that many counties continue to fail in some of the most important areas of older adult protective services.
Critics of Kavulich’s administration, including former protective or
aging services staffers at the department, believe many of his changes
have relaxed oversight of the county agencies and weakened efforts to
ensure they follow rules and keep older adults safe.
These critics note that Kavulich once helmed a county aging agency
and later presided over the association that represents their interests.
That background, they believe, makes him sympathetic to the very
agencies his department is supposed to oversee.
At least one employee is suing him and the department, alleging
retaliation for raising alarms about transparency problems and elder
abuse system failures.
Most alarmingly, hundreds of older adults continue to die while their
abuse and neglect cases are actively being investigated by their local
aging agency, according to data provided to Spotlight PA by state aging
officials.
“Has he made changes? Yes,” said Sheri McQuown, a former Department
of Aging specialist who monitored the quality of protective services by
counties, including the one Kavulich once led. “Do those changes benefit
older adults? No. They benefit the [counties].”
A new monitoring system
Appointed by Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2023, Kavulich has repeatedly
asserted that he inherited a deeply flawed system for assessing how well
counties investigate abuse and neglect allegations and provide services
to keep older adults safe.
He called the system subjective, said it was riddled with
inconsistencies, and claimed that it did little to help counties correct
problems or improve their performance.
This year, he replaced it with a new monitoring system, called the Comprehensive Agency Performance Evaluation, or CAPE.
Under CAPE, counties are assessed and scored in five main categories,
and those results are published online — the first time the department
has made that information easily accessible.
CAPE, Kavulich has said, allows the department to drill down on
specific problems and help counties in the areas where they are
struggling the most, including through training opportunities.
“Accountability is about improvement, not punishment,” Kavulich said at a state Senate hearing in November.
Earlier this year, Spotlight PA obtained copies of the forms and
scoresheets the department used to monitor counties both before CAPE and
after. Those records show the prior monitoring system assessed counties
using a wide range of measures drawn from state regulations.
For instance, it assessed counties on how quickly they met in person
with an older adult suspected of being in danger of abuse or neglect. It
also monitored them on how quickly the investigation was completed.
Denise Getgen, the department’s former director of protective
services, oversaw the agency’s previous monitoring system until her
tenure ended in 2023 and rejected Kavulich’s assertion that it was
flawed. It was “absolutely based on the law and regulations and our
policy documents at the time,” she said.
In fact, Getgen said, the department provided the county aging
agencies with paperwork that cited the specific regulation, policy, or
law for every point on which they were being monitored.
Kevin Longenecker, who headed the department’s division of housing
and aging services before he retired in 2021, echoed Getgen’s assessment
of the legacy system. He said the assertion that it was haphazard and
subjective “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“It was the most consistent monitoring we had,” he said.
Former department employees interviewed by Spotlight PA assert that CAPE makes it easier for counties to receive passing grades.
That is because in implementing CAPE, the department did away with
the previous weighted scores, meaning local aging agencies are no longer
graded more harshly for serious investigative failures. Under CAPE, the
department equally scores relatively minor problems — such as poorly
kept paperwork — and more serious deficiencies, such as failing to
swiftly complete abuse and neglect investigations.
Unlike the previous monitoring system, CAPE does not designate
counties as compliant or noncompliant with state regulations. Nor does
it assign them an overall score. Instead, it uses a percentage system to
score the counties in each of the five main categories — they must
score at least a 75% to avoid additional scrutiny from the department.
Since CAPE went into effect earlier this year, 16 county aging
agencies have been monitored. Of those, 12 received less than 75% in the
“risk mitigation and safety” category, according to department data.
It is one of the most important categories — and one that used to be weighted more heavily.
State aging officials describe it this way on the department’s
website: “Risk mitigation for the older adult involves assessing their
individual needs, coordinating support services, and implementing
protective actions to ensure safety. The goal of risk mitigation and
safety is to enhance the older adult’s well-being and protect them from
further harm.”
In an email, department spokesperson Karen Gray said criticism that CAPE is more lenient on the counties has “no basis in fact.”
“In fact, some AAAs have not met the department’s minimum compliance
threshold of 75% in certain categories, clearly showing the new system
is working and readily identifying issues — not masking them within an
overall score like the previous system allowed,” she said.
When asked whether the department was concerned that the majority of
counties monitored so far were falling short in the risk mitigation
category, Gray did not respond.
More public data
The department has made good on Kavulich’s promise to make more data
about his agency’s work — as well as the work of the county aging
agencies — available to the public.
The department now publishes data on its website on how well counties
are complying with state rules that mandate caseworkers make “every
attempt” to meet face-to-face with an older adult within 24 hours of
receiving an emergency or priority report of suspected abuse or neglect.
That is a metric that the majority of counties have, at least since 2017, met with success.
The agency also began posting data about whether counties complete
abuse and neglect investigations — and provide services to help an
at-risk older adult, if an allegation is substantiated — within 20 days
of receiving a report. (Kavulich, as well as representatives of the
county’s aging agencies, have asserted that the 20-day deadline is a
goal. State regulations say counties “shall make all reasonable efforts”
to complete investigations of reports of need in that timeframe, “and,
in cases of abuse and neglect, at least within 20 days of the receipt of
the report.” The Office of State Inspector General has described it as a
legal requirement.)
Still, the 20-day compliance data on the department’s website exclude
instances where caseworkers were unable to locate an older adult — a
change from past practice, when those cases were included. That makes it
difficult to determine whether counties have, as the department has
asserted, made improvements. It also makes it impossible to compare
their performance with past years.
Asked about the change, Gray said the department isn’t excluding
those data — instead, it is “no longer including” them in its
calculations.
But, she said, the information is still tracked. And the department
has a directive that spells out multiple steps counties must take before
determining someone can’t be located, including contacting the person’s
family and friends and monitoring their residence and frequented
locations.
The 20-day deadline is an area in which many counties have historically fared poorly.
A Spotlight PA analysis of compliance data between 2017 and 2024
found that, in the best year, nearly a third of total cases investigated
annually by the 52 county agencies either missed the 20-day deadline or
contained faulty paperwork that made it impossible to determine how
they performed. Some years were far worse — nearly half didn’t meet the
requirement.
The 20-day compliance data posted on the department’s website does
not permit the public to calculate the percentage of overall cases in
which the deadline was missed, although it does provide overall monthly
scores for each of the 52 agencies. It also doesn’t break down how many
days past the deadline an investigation dragged on. Spotlight PA’s
analysis found that investigations at times blew the deadline by months
or even more than a year.
The data also do not include the number of older adults who died
while their abuse and neglect cases were actively being investigated. In
2018, 888 people died while counties looked into allegations they were
being abused or neglected. In 2023 — the last year of complete data —
that number was 1,511, a 70% increase over just five years.
The association that represents county aging agencies has argued that
those numbers don’t tell the whole story, and that the data are skewed
in part by the dramatic impact of the pandemic on the well-being of
older adults.
Yet the number of deaths hasn’t dropped dramatically in the years
since. Preliminary data show that 1,364 older adults died while under
the care of the system in 2024.
A whistleblower suit
Just before Thanksgiving, a longtime employee of the state Department
of Aging sued the agency and Shapiro in federal court, alleging
retaliation and harassment for sounding the alarm about the state’s
failures in protecting older adults from abuse and neglect.
Aging Services Supervisor Richard Llewellyn alleges department brass
thwarted his efforts to assist investigations by outside agencies,
including the Office of State Inspector General, into the quality of
older adult protective services around Pennsylvania.
Llewellyn also alleges that top department officials purposely
suppressed or manipulated data to shield problems when responding to
public records requests, including in response to one by Spotlight PA.
Llewellyn alleges that Deputy Aging Secretary Jonathan Bowman even
bragged about his ability to exploit loopholes to dodge having to turn
over complete and accurate data.
Llewellyn alleges that when he objected to and later reported the
alleged wrongdoing to other state officials, he was subjected to a
campaign of retaliation, including targeted administrative complaints
and investigations.
He was also stripped of work duties — notably, gathering accurate information in response to Right-to-Know requests.
In his lawsuit, Llewellyn describes a culture of intimidation and
retaliation in violation of the First Amendment as well as the state’s
Whistleblower Law.
Gray said the department cannot comment on personnel matters or pending litigation.
Llewellyn has been suspended from his position since July, the result
of a human resources complaint being filed against him. In all,
Llewellyn has been subjected to five complaints in the space of 13
months, and so far has been cleared of wrongdoing in two.
In an interview, Llewellyn said he was never told who filed the
complaints, but believes they are part of a concerted effort to
intimidate him, hamper criticism, and prevent the system’s problems from
being aired publicly.
Llewellyn said he hopes that, as a result of his litigation, the
retaliation that has upended his professional life comes to an end.
He also said he hopes it sheds light on what he believes is “outright fraud” by department executives.
“And I hope it helps shed light on the fact that the changes made by
Secretary Kavulich benefit the [county aging agencies] and not older
adults,” he said. “Because that is what is happening.”
Full Article & Source:
Elder abuse agencies fail to mitigate risk as Shapiro admin defends system, touts changes
