County Caregiver Screening Program Faces Challenges

An article in yesterday's Napa Valley Register provides an update on a project I've been watching for many months. Lacking confidence that the state was going to solve the problem of preventing dangerous criminals from becoming caregivers and working in frail elders' homes, advocates in Napa County California, including Betty Rhodes of the county's Commission on Aging and Terri Restelli-Deits, planner with the Area Agency on Aging, launched a campaign to urge the county and its cities to require prospective caregivers to obtain permits. To get permits, prospective workers would be fingerprinted for FBI background checks, have their employment history for the last five years checked, and demonstrate, through Department of Motor Vehicles records, that they have good driving records.

There's a lot of support for the proposed program and little opposition. In fact, according to the article, "the list of people invested in the success of the program is a virtual 'Who’s Who' of law enforcement." It includes District Attorney Gary Lieberstein, who, in an earlier Register article, was quoted as saying he'd heard of parole officers telling convicts that home caregiving was a promising field for gainful employment. “I don’t think they would suggest they do it because they wanted to see someone ripped off,” he said. “I’d imagine it’s because parolees can get the work without a lot of background checking.” Deputy District Attorney Bryan Tong, who runs an elder abuse unit in the DA's office, estimates that about one-third of all the financial elder abuse cases he sees involve home caregivers.

The County appointed staff to help develop the program and yesterday's article reported on some of the obstacles and issues they've identified regarding the program, which include:

The possibility that it would require an act of the Legislature and the state Attorney General before FBI records can be released to the agency Napa County might set up.

The risk Napa County could be sued if a screened caregiver abuses an elder, especially if the system — for whatever reason — failed to flag a caregiver with a significant criminal past.

Problems with delays in getting fingerprint background check results, which could be a month long, as the county In Home Support Services has experienced. In that case, caregivers might not be able to work when they want to, encouraging them to operate underground.

The need for cooperation from local cities if the county passed an ordinance that would affect businesses within city jurisdictions.

Questions about how to enforce the law.

To the last item, I would add the need to develop specific criteria for disqualifying workers (e.g. types of crimes that would disqualify workers, length of time since crimes were committed, etc.) as well as mitigating factors that could affect decisions such as evidence of rehabilitation or restitution. While deciding who should and should not work with vulnerable populations may seem like a no-brainer, states and agencies have run up against myriad problems, some of which I've described in earlier posts. For example, When New Jersey passed a law disqualifying workers with certain convictions from working, over 400 current employees, many of whom had worked for years and were doing a good job, were found to have committed disqualifying crimes. So the state had to figure out how to keep them. Others have reported instances in which disqualified workers have challenged decisions to withhold employment, which has raised the call for scientific evidence linking past criminal conduct to heightened risk. For more on these issues, see Elder Abuse by Paid Caregivers on my Web site.

In the meantime, as Napa continues it struggle to iron out the issues, California and several other states are developing legislation.