Background

The Virginia Public Guardian and Conservator Program (“Program") operates within the Department of Aging and Rehabilitative Services (DARS) and provides public guardianship and sometimes conservatorship services to adult residents of Virginia adjudicated by a Virginia circuit court to be indigent, incapacitated, and without any other proper and suitable person willing and able to serve as a guardian, as a conservator, or both. The population of vulnerable adults is expected to increase in Virginia in the coming years as is a concomitant need for public guardian slots. This study identified the need for public guardian slots by assessing demographic trends, a survey of the Working Interdisciplinary Network of Guardianship Stakeholders, census data, and data provided from DARS to the Virginia Tech Research Team (the VT Team).

Methods

1. The VT team contacted and surveyed 13 organizational representatives involved in the Working Interdisciplinary Network of Guardianship Stakeholders (WINGS) in Virginia with relationships with the Program in order to gather their perspectives on future needs for public guardian slots.

2. The VT Team used U.S. Census data from 2020-2022 to determine population change over two years for each of Virginia’s counties to inform potential increases in the need for additional public guardian slots and to determine the percent of people living in poverty. In addition, the VT Team used data from the most recently available American Community Survey (2021) combined with U.S. Census data from 2022 to determine the percent of Virginia adults with at least one of the following conditions: cognitive, emotional, and functional impairments.

3. DARs provided the VT Team with 2023 unrestricted slots and ID/DD waitlist data collected from the Program. Additionally, DARS provided data from the Department of Behavior Health and Human Sciences (DBHDS).

4. The VT Team reported and interpreted the findings from the information it collected as well as the information provided by DARS.

Results and Conclusion

The combined data sources reveal that each Public Guardian and Conservator Program (PGP) region has a projected future need for additional public guardian slots. WINGS information indicates a rising need for slots. Population increases in densely inhabited areas such as Virginia’s Golden Crescent and areas experiencing population declines of younger adults and high poverty rates, such as in the Western Region of the state, also indicate a need for additional slots for the PGP, reflecting a growing population of older adults, a subset of whom will require a public guardian. Also, waitlist data confirm this need across special populations (i.e., MI/DD, ID/DD, MH) as well as unspecified adult populations.

The VT Team recommends funding an additional 110 slots to be distributed across the PGP regions.