HARRISBURG — The Shapiro administration has delayed implementing new contracts with local agencies responsible for keeping vulnerable older adults safe from abuse and neglect — agreements that a top official previously said would include tougher accountability measures for those that fail to improve.
Earlier this year, Secretary of Aging Jason Kavulich told Spotlight PA that he intended to add clearer and stricter language into renewed agreements with the 52 county agencies. A Spotlight PA investigation over the past year has revealed significant and persistent failures in Pennsylvania’s older adult protective services system, some of which have led to devastating or catastrophic outcomes.
The department’s five-year contracts with the counties expired in June, but state aging officials have opted to extend them for another three months and potentially until the end of the year.
Asked why, spokesperson Karen Gray pointed to the department’s new system for monitoring whether counties are following all state laws and regulations for conducting quality abuse and neglect investigations. The new monitoring system, CAPE, was launched this year, and so far the state has assessed only 10 of the 52 county agencies.
“These [new contracts] will — for the first time — reflect more robust, comprehensive, meaningful performance improvement plans than under the old system,” Gray said in an email. “These improved, stronger agreements take time to get right to ensure our shared mission of protecting older adults is achieved.”
When the new contracts are finalized, she said the department still plans to include, for the first time, “processes and actions to be taken” based on a county’s performance metrics. She did not specify what those will be.
Department officials have asserted the new monitoring system will provide a more detailed look into the protective services work counties do, and more quickly help them correct any problems.
But some former aging officials say the new system makes it easier for counties to look as if they are providing quality protective services. It is also now the subject of a special audit by state Auditor General Tim DeFoor’s office.
Between 2017 and 2022, the aging department found that anywhere from 10% to more than a third of Pennsylvania’s 52 Area Agencies on Aging were failing annually to comply with strict state regulations, which impose standards for everything from training staff to investigating allegations of elder abuse to meeting deadlines for conducting those probes.
During the same period, the number of older adults who died during open, active investigations increased by more than 90%, records show.
Despite this, the Department of Aging has never taken punitive action against agencies that don’t meet state standards. The department has not yanked their funding, forced them to spend more on protective services, or even regularly alerted the county’s local government officials to the problems.
Under the existing five-year agreements, the Department of Aging can “consider all options,” including withholding funding and terminating the contract with a county agency that fails to comply with state regulations.
Yet the department, which was created in 1978, has never terminated a contract with a county. Instead, the county agencies are asked to submit so-called “corrective action plans,” or documents that outline how they intend to rectify any deficiencies the state found. The department has fought Spotlight PA’s efforts to obtain copies of those action plans.
In an interview with Spotlight PA this past spring, Kavulich said the CAPE system will allow the state to better discern where exactly counties are having problems providing quality protective services. That in turn will allow the state to provide those counties with training and other support to correct deficiencies, he said.
Under CAPE, counties will be assessed every 18 months rather than annually. If, after three monitoring sessions, a county agency has not fixed the problem, then the department will move to decertify it, Kavulich said during the interview. He said clear language to that effect would be added to the new contracts with the counties when they are renewed.