Set of Third Initiatives

1. Complete and promote education to increase the public’s awareness of nursing home resident rights, adult foster care participant rights, and home for the aged resident rights.

2. Offer throughout the state comprehensive education for investigators and prosecutors on best practices to pursue embezzlement from vulnerable adult cases.

3. Establish standardized training for guardian ad litems to ensure the individual appointed by the court to provide information – both to the alleged incapacitated person about the legal proceedings and to the court about the individual’s circumstances and wishes –spends adequate time meeting privately with the vulnerable adult, and provides the court with a standardized, thorough, and objective report.

4. Provide the right to appellate counsel for alleged legally incapacitated indigent individuals when they object to the determination of capacity.*

5. Accelerate appeal time for adult guardian and conservator cases so that individuals have a meaningful right to have their case reviewed to ensure justice.

6. Ensure, with reasonable exceptions, the proposed ward or protected individual’s attendance at the hearing where the decision regarding appointment of a guardian or a conservator takes place.

7. Mandate, before an older individual is subject to a guardianship or a conservatorship, a medical exam.

8. Require objectivity in the appointment of qualified guardian ad litems, and professional guardians and conservators. A blind draw or other objective measure must be utilized.

9. Mandate reporting for security brokers and dealers, insurance agents, mortgage companies, title companies, casinos, and money services business on suspected financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult.

10. Update the adult protective services reporting mechanisms to allow for written reports and, if necessary, increase staffing to provide for faster responses.