This sixth in a series of eight Background Briefs on conservator exploitation, which is funded by the U.S. Justice Department's Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and produced by the National Center for State Courts, reviews innovative programs in several states that are designed to counter financial exploitation of elderly victims by conservators.
The Brief's general assessment of such efforts nationwide is that "there is a dire need for guardianship/conservatorship reform, as relatively few courts have the resources, staffing, or expertise to actively monitor conservatorships." There are, however, several programs and courts that have pursued promising reforms. In order to identify such programs, the project team that undertook this study queried multiple guardianship-related email discussion lists, performed an Internet search, and identified well-established programs mentioned in previous reports and articles. The team then interviewed program directors. The availability of data to document programs' activities and/or outcomes was a key factor in the final selection of the innovative programs profiled in this Brief. One set of innovative programs described is characterized by professionally staffed state-level auditing programs. Three such state programs are described. A second set of profiled innovative programs is characterized by having local judicial and court clerks monitor the operation of conservatorships. Two such programs are described. A third set of described innovative programs is characterized by having a volunteer coordinator who is responsible for training and monitoring volunteer monitors of conservatorships. Three such programs are described.