Dramatic Rise in Home Care Providers with Felony Convictions
ABC affiliate KGOTV in San Francisco, CA conducted an investigation into the number of senior care providers with felony convictions. In addition, the investigation also discovered that city legislation put in place to protect against elder abuse is being ignored. This law allows the state’s In-Home Support Services program authority to conduct background checks on behalf of seniors and disabled adults seeking caretakers. However, these background checks are not considered mandatory and, as a result, are not always enforced.
The report provides evidence of one incident that occurred in 2009 when a 92-year-old woman lost roughly $30,000 as a result of financial abuse from a caretaker. The caretaker pled guilty to felony financial abuse when authorities accused her of signing fraudulent checks from the 92-year-old woman’s account and using her credit cards to make purchases. The woman’s family discovered the caretaker had been convicted of drug charges previously, thus undermining the results of the background check that Home Care Assistance in California conducted.
This report demonstrates that even when legislation has been created to protect the elderly, some people can “slip through the cracks” and subsequently become caretakers for unsuspecting elderly people. It is not impossible to protect the elderly from elder abuse and fraud, but in order to do so; background checks and other safeguards need to be mandated to prevent incidents of elder abuse. According to the report, background checks are not currently mandatory nor are they enforced. Therefore, it is easy for a company to simply overlook the necessity for background checks altogether. Anybody can easily become a caregiver regardless of criminal history, and this simply cannot happen if elderly people are to be protected from abuse.
