PROTECTIVE SERVICES FOR THE ELDERLY: Do We Deal Competently with Incompetence?

Protective services are conceptualized as legal safeguards for aged individuals who are incapable of prudent financial or personal self-determination. Despite this protective intent, conservatorship, personal guardianship, and involuntary hospitalization may in fact work against elders' best interests as a result of their limitation of avenues for expressing autonomy and self-worth. In this article, psychological theories of effectance or control are applied to analyzing the effects of protective legal intervention upon older persons. The rationale of parens patriae is examined in terms of its conceptual appropriateness for application to the aged; social and legal sources of bias in protective philosophy are enumerated and discussed. Statutes and procedural conventions governing competency and commitment cases are similarly evaluated, and found from an effectance-theoretical perspective to pose substantial threats to older individuals' psychological and physical well-being. Although recommended statutory and procedural revisions would be helpful in ameliorating these negative effects, they are not sufficient to eradicate them. A conceptual reanalysis not only of the courts' responsibility and role in caring for the infirm, but of social policy in general as it is presently applied to the elderly, is therefore recommended.