In most states, the Adult Protective Services (APS) agencies, typically located within the human services agency, is the principal public agency responsible for both investigating reported cases of elder abuse and providing victims and their families with treatment and protective services. In most jurisdictions, it is the county departments of social services which maintain an APS unit that serves the need of local communities.
Since the enactment of California's mandatory elder abuse reporting statutes in 1984, the Los Angeles County (APS) Program has witnessed a threefold increase in the number of elder abuse incidents reported. The types of abuse most commonly reported are physical or sexual abuse, neglect, abandonment, and psychological or fiduciary abuse.
In response to the rapidly increasing percentage of financial frauds and scams, now 24 percent of all reported cases of elder abuse, L.A. County established a Fiduciary Abuse Specialist Team (FAST).
The FAST team includes public and private sector professionals, including representatives from the Los Angeles Police Department and county sheriff's department; the offices of the county district attorney, city attorney and public guardian; and experts in gerontology, civil and criminal elder abuse law, case management, real estate, banking, private conservatorship, insurance and investments, psychiatrists and other medical professionals.
Each team member provides case consultation services, on a pro bono basis, at both regularly scheduled case conferences and by telephone, up to two hours per month, on emergency cases where prompt action is needed to avert imminent unlawful depletion or transfer of a client's assets.
The county APS, Public Guardian and Long-Term Care Ombudsman programs have selected staff to serve as fiduciary abuse specialists for their programs. They serve as consultants for their units, attend monthly case consultations and seek telephone consultations from the FAST consultants.
While multidisciplinary elder abuse teams have been established in other counties across the country, FAST is unique in that it was the first team in the nation formed to concentrate primarily on financial elder abuse.
To date, most of the FAST cases have involved abuse in the areas of fraudulent real estate transactions, abuse of power of attorney or conservatorship, and the loss of liquid assets.
Since the FAST team was established in 1994, they have prevented elder abuse victims from losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In addition to local efforts to curb elder abuse, the Administration on Aging has launched a new federal campaign against Medicare fraud and abuse called Operation Instore Trust. Operation Instore Trust, now being piloted in five states, is expected to go nationwide over the next six years.
According to Bill Benson, acting secretary of aging, the overarching goal of the program is to combat those perpetuating fraud and abuse, especially as it relates to payment for nursing home care for six million elderly eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.
Congress, too, is taking action to help elderly victims of scams. Most recently, the Senate, on April 25, unanimously passed legislation to protect elderly home owners from scams charging older Americans exorbitant fees for reverse mortgages, which provide cash to the home owners. The bill requires that home owners be informed of all costs of getting reverse mortgages and enables the Department of Housing and Urban Development to ensure that home owners do not have to pay any unnecessary or excessive costs. Similar legislation (H.R. 1297), introduced by Rep. Rick Lazio (R-N.Y.), is pending in the House.