This story has been updated with additional comments from the Kansas Department for Children and Families. Stacy Crow made sure to check the outdoor cameras at Shirley Crow’s house in Wichita every now and again. Stacy lived five hours away from her 85-year-old mother-in-law, and the video check-ins were necessary because Shirley had Alzheimer’s disease and needed regular medication. “We did like to just see her out on her porch drinking coffee and know she’s doing well,” Stacy said. “Even just be able to say good morning to her through that Ring (camera).” Shriley was strong-willed, independent and always took care of others. Stacy said she was the loving backbone of the family. Shirley’s health began to decline last year and she was spending time in the hospital. That’s when the Crows noticed Shirley wasn’t taking all her medication — sometimes missing weeks worth of blood pressure medicine and blood thinners. Shirley was also missing appointments. Shirley was supposed to be looked after by a caretaker, but the family says the caretaker failed to do their job. Stacy filed a Kansas Adult Protective Services report on Oct. 5, 2024. Throughout the rest of the month, Shirley was back in the hospital and the Crows alleged more medicine was missed. Shirley died just weeks later on Nov. 2. The caretaker named in the Adult Protective Services complaint declined to comment for this story. The case is still open eight months later. Stacy has asked for updates, but the caseworker looking into alleged mistreatment has 70 other people on her caseload. There just isn’t time to investigate everything she has. “We got an investigator that I truly believe has a heart. She was very kind,” Stacy said. “I understand they have an overwhelming demand … I don’t fault them. I just want things to change.” The Crow case is just one of more than 10,000 adult maltreatment cases investigated in Kansas each year. Alone, the case doesn’t suggest any larger issues with the system. So The Beacon asked the Kansas Department for Children and Families what an investigator’s average caseload is, but the agency doesn’t share that information. A previous version of this article said the agency doesn’t track the numbers. The Beacon asked DCF multiple times why they don’t track the information, but DCF declined an interview. “I don’t have staff caseload numbers,” said Erin La Row, DCF spokesperson. Eventually, La Row said case assignments aren’t shared because they are considered confidential. The Beacon then tried to clarify whether the agency tracked caseloads but didn’t share the information, but the agency declined to comment. “I don’t have anything to add beyond what has already been provided,” she said over email. It was only after the story was published that DCF clarified that they do track caseload information, but they just don’t share it. La Row said a general idea of caseloads can be found by dividing the regional caseload assignment by the number of investigators in that area, La Row said. In February alone, there were 199 new cases assigned in the Kansas City area and 17 case investigators. Wichita had 240 new cases assigned — the most of any region in the state that month — and also had 17 case investigators. That’s an average of 12 new cases for a Kansas City area investigator and 14 for a Wichita APS staffer. A single month’s assignments isn’t an accurate way to calculate caseloads, though. Caseworkers carry over cases from previous months, and it isn’t clear how often that happens because DCF publicly share the average number of days cases are active. Lori Delagrammatikas, retired executive director of the National Adult Protective Services Association, said 20 to 25 cases a month is a desirable range, though others say that number isn’t a good representation of a healthy workload. A caseworker could manage 35 cases, but even that number is pushing it. Seventy cases just isn’t sustainable. “When you’re starting looking at numbers like that,” Delagrammatikas said, “you’re either going to screen out people and not investigate what happened to them or it’s going to be slow.” Reported cases are also increasing. The population is aging and DCF has seen a 9% increase in assigned cases since 2023. There were 9,700 assigned cases in fiscal year 2023 and 10,608 in fiscal 2024. Agencies should always strive for manageable caseloads, but caseloads aren’t a perfect indicator of how busy an investigator is, said Bill Benson, national policy adviser at the National Adult Protective Services Association. Some cases are more nuanced and complicated — taking more time to investigate. Benson said timeliness in investigations is important. In fiscal year 2024, 98.7% of assigned cases had timely contact with the person, DCF data said. In February 2025, the number was 99.6%. Timely contact means a face-to-face visit within 24 hours if the agency thinks someone is in imminent danger, three days for all other reports of abuse and five days for reports of neglect or financial exploitation. Benson said there’s no reason to believe Kansas is falling behind in adult protective services. Delagrammatikas said she’s seen Kansas roll out innovative staff retention policies. There’s no clear data to show that Kansas is systematically failing to investigate cases. These systems do lack gold-standard data, though. Advocates said they’d like agencies to track satisfaction with case outcomes. How quickly cases are closed could also be helpful, but that also is flawed — complicated cases take more time. “If ever we get to kind of a holy grail (of data),” Benson said, “we’ll be able to measure things from a quality or qualitative standpoint.” Kansas also can’t accurately be compared to other states to see how well it investigates alleged adult maltreatment. State-by-state data is just too fractured. In some states, one caseworker investigates a complaint before that complaint is handed off to another caseworker to address the issue. In some states, that’s just a single staffer. States might also define types of abuse differently. Until recently, one state didn’t investigate financial fraud unless it was federal money. Stealing from someone’s pension wouldn’t trigger an adult protective services investigation, but Social Security fraud would. Delagrammatikas is trying to fix this. She chairs the nationwide Gold Standards committee, a group of state officials trying to standardize APS policies. That means agreeing on similar definitions of abuse and neglect. She said the group does talk about what data should look like, but states first need to hammer out the other variations in adult protective services before it can get there. State adult protective services vary so widely because funding is so different. The federal government in 2022 approved $15 million in APS money, the first time federal money was set aside. But the Trump administration has proposed cutting all of it. Massive cuts to other social services programs are also proposed. Those cuts will affect senior centers, Meals on Wheels, utility payment programs for seniors and other benefits, Delagrammatikas said. The Gold Standards committee may also stop meeting if that money is cut because state agency staff will be too busy managing the fallout. “It’s going to be a cascading effect,” she said, “and a lot of people are going to be seriously harmed with this.”
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