Helping the Elderly: Volunteer Will Check Conservators

In a scene that grows increasingly common, a frail, 83-year-old widow was rushed to Santa Monica hospital last summer, unconscious and alone.

Marian Houghtaling made a remarkable recovery and after months of treatment and physical therapy, she is nearly ready to be discharged.

But when Houghtaling entered the hospital, her problems were really just beginning.

Houghtaling is one of a growing number of older people who can no longer maintain a household by themselves. Whether they are sick enough to require continuous care in a convalescent facility, or if they can return home with care, they must rely on someone else to oversee their affairs. Thanks to a promising new program, hundreds of elderly Los Angeles County residents may be getting better protection of their interests.

In a mobile society where one’s closest relatives are often several time zones away, professional conservators have emerged to fill the role once generally taken by younger family members, neighbors or friends.

Since her second week in the hospital, Houghtaling’s life has been run by a court-appointed conservator--a paid manager who has complete control over her bank accounts, personal effects and decisions over where she will live and how she will be cared for.

The locks on her home have been changed and her check book taken from her.

About 12,000 to 13,000 county residents are living under the control of conservators.

And an estimated 10% of them are believed to suffer from neglect, abuse or theft from their estates.

Others, like Houghtaling, are simply angry that their affairs are being run by strangers and feel helpless in attempting to deal with the often confusing and complex procedures of the Probate Court.

Now, in an effort to more effectively police the conservatorships in Los Angeles, area colleges and universities are teaming up with the Probate Court to send scores of students into the field to make surprise visits to the elderly in an effort to expose problems and possibly return some control over their lives to them.

Under a program in which colleges will award course credit for volunteer work, students will form the core of a work force that will routinely make visits to those who are incapacitated.

California State University, Los Angeles, plans to place students in the program starting with its winter quarter that begins in January. Other area schools, including UCLA, Whittier College, Biola University and Azusa Pacific University, are also working on plans to offer the volunteer program to its students for course credit, officials said.

Probate Court Judge Julius A. Leetham, who has appointed hundreds of conservators, including Houghtaling’s, is among the first to point out the shortcomings of the current system of court oversight.

As architect of the Volunteer Visitation Alliance, Leetham is hoping to “find the 1,500 conservatorships--out of about 12,000 to 13,000--that really need help.”

In an interview in his chambers at Los Angeles Superior Court, Leetham said, “We have the mechanism to deal with them if we can just find them.”

Under a state law enacted in 1978, people for whom conservators are named must be visited at least once every other year by a court investigator. But the system is so overloaded that the results of its inquiries are in question. In Los Angeles County, there are 12 investigators who must collectively make about 6,000 visits a year.

“That means calling in advance and not taking more than a certain amount of time,” Leetham said. “I can’t rely on those visits. They can only see the obvious.”

As the nation’s population continues to age and financial restraints make the prospect of adding investigators remote, the workload for the investigators is likely to grow.

“Court investigators can’t really be sure of what they’re seeing. Although (their visits) fulfill the law, I don’t feel better about it,” Leetham said.

“I’ve been stamping letters (of appointment) everyday, but have no idea what is really happening out there. . . . How do we know what happens once we appoint a conservator? How do we deal with this void,” Leetham asked. And how, he asked, will a better system of supervision be paid for?

“In this country, in this state, you won’t get funds for something like this,” he said. “If it’s not done with volunteers, it won’t be done.”

So, without any budget, staff or authorization, Leetham founded the alliance to build a volunteer organization to make routine visits to people with conservators.

Initially, Leetham said, he believed that older people would be the best source of volunteers. Retired individuals have the time, he figured, and would form a natural bond with the people being visited.

But after the program was begun in June, it attracted only about 25 volunteers.

Leetham figured that about 400 to 500 volunteers would be necessary to effectively locate problems and unnecessary conservatorships.

Then in September, Dr. Ruth Wu, dean of the health and human service department of Cal State, Los Angeles, contacted Leetham about using students.

“It will give our students a better understanding of the elderly (and) some of the challenges in counseling and care,” Wu said.

“Obviously, there is a growing number of elderly,” said Dr. Rodolfo Arevalo, chairman of the social work department at Cal State, Los Angeles, who is supervising the program. “And there is more and more concern in the court over the quality of care they are getting.”

Arevalo said he is getting a “positive response” from students for the volunteer program, and he anticipates having at least 20 signed up for the fall quarter.

The alliance has since contacted more than 100 colleges and universities in the area and so far about one dozen are developing similar programs.

Meanwhile, the existing volunteer force has begun making visits to people having conservators targeted by court investigators for closer supervision, said Sheila Torrance Pearce, chairman of the volunteer group.

So far, not many cases of obvious abuse have been found.

One conservator, found to be an alcoholic, has been replaced and one convalescent facility has been reported to the county Department of Health Services for having substandard conditions, Pearce said. On several occasions, she said, volunteers have called on people listed as having conservators, only to find that they have died.

But Leetham said that if the percentage of problem cases holds up over a larger number of visits, “then a lot of conservatees are not getting the care they deserve.”

And Pearce cautioned that they may not yet have found all the problems in the cases they have examined. “It’s often hard to tell (if there is abuse or neglect) on the first or second visit,” Pearce said.

The alliance’s focus is now turning to professional conservators.

During the last 15 years, a growing contingent of 20 to 25 professionals have gone into the business of being conservators for incapacitated people who have no friends or relatives willing to oversee their affairs.

Accusations of misconduct by these professionals have been rampant, but few cases of outright thievery or abuse have been uncovered.

And, perhaps ironically, Leetham and other experts in the field said, the need for professionals is growing.

“It’s the only system I can think of unless everyone has a grandnephew” who will care for them, Leetham said.

Marshall Oldman, chairman of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.’s committee on probate and trust law, said: “We could use 100 more (professionals) and not get close to meeting the need. There are now about 12 to 20 in the area. One hospital could keep one” professional in business.

By targeting all the professionals operating in the area, the alliance is hoping to find out just how good or bad they really are.

Hospitals often seek to have professional conservators appointed when they receive patients who are incapacitated.

That is how Marian Houghtaling came to have a professional appointed.

Her closest relative lives in Minnesota and could not care for her. Friends and neighbors were willing to help her, but not knowing how the court system operates--and how fast it can move--a professional was contacted by the hospital and appointed by Leetham before they could intervene.

“I was very angry when I found out,” Houghtaling said from her wheelchair in Santa Monica Hospital. “I was angry and confused.”

Although she fought it at first, Houghtaling said she now realizes that she needs someone to help manage her affairs. But she prefers a trusted neighbor to do the job.

Once a conservatorship is initiated, it can be difficult to change, even when the facts are brought before the court.

In Houghtaling’s case, court papers have been filed and a hearing held, but there has been little movement by the court, or conservator Rodney P. Swanson to acquiesce to her demands.

Meanwhile, she waits, not knowing what will happen to her.

Houghtaling said she wishes she had made firm arrangements ahead of time for how she should be cared for.

“But none of us do,” she said.