Guardianship
Court Volunteer Guardianship Monitoring Handbooks
This online resource produced by the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging is intended for use by courts to train and supervise volunteers to go out into the community, visit individuals under guardianship, determine whether guardians need assistance and report back to the judge. The Handbook guides court staff step by step in developing a volunteer guardianship monitoring and assistance program, recruiting and training volunteers and compiling community information volunteers and guardians will need. The Handbook contains three related online guides: Handbook from Program Coordinators; Handbook for Trainers; and Handbook for Volunteers.
Informational Brief on Unbefriended Elders
Rough estimates show that three to four percent of the nursing home population are older adults without capacity to give informed consent for treatment and who have no advance directive for the treatment nor any family, friends or legally authorized surrogate to be involved in medical decision-making. These older adults are often known as unbefriended elders or adult orphans. This brief, using data collected largely from NORC's 2010 outreach to state long-term care ombudsmen and information from the July 2003 American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging report Incapacitated and Alone: Health Care Decision-Making for the Unbefriended Elderly, reviews existing mechanisms and practice for decision-making on behalf of unbefriended elders, including hierarchy laws and changes to state laws that address previous weaknesses in the law. This brief also highlights promising practices, puts forth strategies and ideas for long-term care ombudsmen to address the unbefriended elder issue, reviews policy suggestions and provides links to additional resources and sample forms and documents. View the conference call on this topic.
Judicial Determination of Capacity of Older Adults in Guardianship Proceedings: A Handbook for Judges
The handbook, which is a collaborative effort of members of the American Bar Association
(ABA) Commission on Law and Aging, the American Psychological Association (APA) and the
National College of Probate Judges (NCPJ), is the second product of the ABA/APA Assessment of Capacity in Older Adults Project Working Group and is intended to provide a framework that judges may find useful and effective in capacity determination.