Sec. Jason Kavulich has continued stops across the Commonwealth highlighting the Department’s all-new, modernized tool to ensure local aging agencies are adequately serving older adults.
Harrisburg, PA – Pennsylvania Department of Aging (PDA) Secretary Jason Kavulich is continuing a statewide tour, highlighting how the Shapiro Administration’s new approach to evaluating the performance of older adult protective services is already delivering better results and keeping older adults safe.
Two more AAAs – Butler and Crawford – this week joined the growing list of agencies that have recently been evaluated through the Comprehensive Aging Performance Evaluation (CAPE), bringing the total number of results for AAAs on PDA’s website to 30, covering 41 counties. CAPE monitoring order and completion status for each AAA is here.
CAPE is a tool that tells local aging agencies exactly what they need to do to improve, and leaves behind a deficient legacy system that only told an agency if it passed or failed - but provided no details on how to come into compliance. This new tool is:
- Doubling and even tripling compliance scores for local aging agencies’ timely responses to reports of suspected elder abuse:
- Delaware County → 40 percent in 2024 to 81 percent in 2026
- Westmoreland County → 29 percent in 2024 to 94 percent in 2026
- Identifying areas of improvement faster than ever, like documentation issues in Centre County that previously delayed the delivery of services; and
- Providing historic levels of transparency and accountability of the Area Agency on Aging (AAA) network by posting performance results online.
During the tour’s two most recent stops in Perry and Crawford counties, Secretary Kavulich explained how CAPE leaves behind a prior ineffective pass/fail system that did not provide adequate oversight of local aging agencies and instead requires each of Pennsylvania’s 52 AAAs to be evaluated for different metrics during a singular monitoring review. This gives the Department a better snapshot of the local organization’s overall functioning, and helps to quickly identify trends and focus training resources where they are most needed.
In the 2026-27 budget, Governor Josh Shapiro secured a $1 million increase for CAPE so the Department can continue to improve AAA oversight and accountability.
See what Pennsylvanians are watching and reading about the Department’s overhauled approach to monitoring AAAs and how it’s keeping older adults safe.
WJET-TV Erie: PA Dept. of Aging announces $1M for CAPE tool during Crawford Co. visit
Carlisle Sentinel: Shapiro administration to highlight tool improving oversight of aging agencies
Times Observer: Budget offers boost to protecting seniors
Meadville Tribune: Improving the Safety Net for Seniors – Secretary of Aging Visits Meadville
By Mike Crowley, Meadville Tribune
The scene Becky Wilkinson described was not the sort of “golden years” image that anyone envisions for their older neighbors.
“Our staff are out in the field in conditions that most people do not even believe exist,” said Wilkinson, a protective services supervisor with Active Aging Inc. “We go in homes that are hoarded to the ceiling. We go in homes that have insect infestations, cockroaches, bedbugs, rats, pets, pet feces, cat urine — everywhere.”
The point of the picture Wilkinson painted was not to shock. After all, her audience was made up largely of social services personnel and administrators who are familiar with such scenes.
Instead, the point was to illustrate the challenges faced by Active Aging investigators and to highlight the need to educate members of the public, many of whom would prefer not to think about such situations.
The message came during a roundtable discussion Thursday at Active Aging featuring Pennsylvania Secretary of Aging Jason Kavulich as well as Krista Geer, executive director of Active Aging, Crawford County Commissioner Eric Henry and other Active Aging staff members.
The occasion was Kavulich’s statewide tour of the Area Agency on Aging network to promote the Comprehensive Aging Performance Evaluation tool introduced by Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration last year and made possible through a $1 million budget increase.
“Older adults in Pennsylvania deserve a modernized system that helps them stay safe and supported, healthy and thriving, but our infrastructure had not kept pace with the growing and changing needs of older adults,” Kavulich said. “We have raised the bar of accountability. CAPE allows the department to do away with a simple pass/fail scoring system, and instead comprehensively ask, ‘What does this local agency specifically need to improve?’”
It’s a question that Active Aging staff members have been considering with the completion of their first CAPE evaluation.
The agency’s scores were quite high with regard to caregiver support programs: Of six categories, none were lower than 94%, Geer noted. But there was some room for improvement with regard to protective services, where two categories — documentation requirements and risk mitigation — scored just under the 75% target threshold.
“One of the biggest challenges that was noted — and it’s for every Area Agency on Aging that’s dealing with this — is making our documentation clear, concise and complete,” Geer said. “It’s about being able to tell a story so that someone who knows absolutely nothing can read it.”
The often emotionally taxing nature of the work makes that goal a challenge. Citing a recent Crawford County example, Kavulich described staff members working with a senior who had lost his apartment, in part due to alcoholism, and spending much of the day situating the man in a hotel for temporary housing.
“We have care managers out there helping him till 7 o’clock at night and then trying to get their notes in — and then take the next call the next day,” Kavulich said. “That’s the part that people need to hear. It’s not that they have a seven-hour day to sit and put their notes in. It’s that they’re doing one investigation, moving to another investigation, trying to wrap them up as quick as they can.”
Active Aging investigations, Wilkinson explained, tend to fall into two broad categories: neglect, including self-neglect, and financial concerns. When she started nearly 25 years ago, the agency typically handled about 60 investigations each year. Today, that figure is approaching 300 with four full-time investigators handling up to a dozen cases at any given time.
As the number of cases has increased, the complexity has as well, particularly with regard to financial investigations that may involve international cyber criminals and little hope of ever recovering missing funds.
On the positive side, Wilkinson continued, the staff size is appropriate and seniors are not being left at risk. The challenge is finding the time and resources to consistently document the agency’s work. Like the overall case numbers, the documentation demands have increased over the decades, and they records are integral not only to overall transparency but also to obtaining much needed funding.
Wilkinson gave the new CAPE system a positive review and said after years of requests, a recent training session addressing the documentation process had proved effective.
“They’re really trying,” she said.
One possibility for streamlining the documentation process, Geer said, is the use of generative artificial intelligence.
Until that happens, the support system for Crawford County seniors will continue to rely on the Active Aging staff members who investigate reports of neglect and financial crimes, meeting with residents, working to improve their conditions and trying to find time to not just help people but also to report on what they have done.
Henry recalled seeing the work of Active Aging staff members up close over more than 30 years as a paramedic — but, like Wilkinson and Kavulich, noted that the average resident rarely gets such a view of their work.
“These great folks we have working at Active Aging, who do a wonderful job — I believe the public thinks they come in, wave a magic wand, and solve a problem in about 15 minutes,” Henry said. “I think they believe that Active Aging and their staff can just pick somebody up and move them from the situation they’re in to a better situation without any legal ramifications.”
The reality, according to Henry and other members of the roundtable panel, is much more complicated. Seniors, like everyone else, Geer pointed out, have the right to make bad choices.
They also have to willingly accept services in order to receive assistance, but they’re not always of a mind to do so.
But Kavulich saw reason for optimism in the face of such ongoing challenges.
“When you look at Crawford’s results on our webpage, you can see good work is happening here,” he said. “And the great thing about CAPE is, it’s not just saying that good work is happening here, it’s saying this is where we have to help them get their good work to great work.”