The people associated with Spokane County’s Guardianship Monitoring Program recently marked the program’s 25-year anniversary.
"We have about 2,200 people who are subject to either guardianship or conservatorship or both," said Superior Court Judge Rachelle Anderson, who presided over the celebration.
"That means that 2,200 people in Spokane have been determined to not be able to make decisions for themselves, whether it be decisions about where they're living or their medical decisions or financial decisions. So they are subject to court orders that have assigned a person to make the decisions for them."
Anderson says the program is Spokane County's way of helping the judges like her oversee those cases.
In the late 1990s, the Washington legislature mandated counties do more to oversee the affairs of people like these. Now-retired Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor says legislators didn’t tell them how to do it.
"The bottom line was the legislature put the onus on the county to supervise these types of programs. And how much money do you think they gave us? None. Zero," she recounted at the anniversary gathering.
"The fact that we weren't doing it was pretty typical of all the other counties in the state of Washington. Nobody was doing it," she said.
Rachelle Anderson says Spokane County’s program is mostly volunteer-driven. There are two staff members and judges like her who oversee it. But it’s mostly volunteers who review files and documents of those 2,200 individual cases.
This interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.
DN: What do volunteers do in terms of audits?
RA: Once a year, the conservator is supposed to fill out a report that explains how they've spent the money on behalf of the incapacitated person for the year.
So they will have, it's like a checkbook, they will have a form they fill out that explains any money that came in during the year and what sources it came from and then where monies were spent. And they're supposed to keep them under categories, so medical expenses, living expenses, other. And then they also have to have their supporting documents, sort of the checks and balances.
The bank statements will come in as well and the volunteer auditors will compare monies in and monies out. And it needs to balance at the end of the year. So they will look at whether or not it balances. And then they also take a look at some of the things that the money's being spent for, because that's another thing you don't want somebody to get taken advantage of. Maybe they can say, we've spent $600 at the casino, but I'm not sure that that person should have $600 spent at the casino. So they look a little deeper into the types of monies that are being spent.
DN: You have five volunteers for 2,200 cases. How do you pull that off?
RA: It's a challenge for sure. We have systems, I think, that are really good as far as keeping track of when those reports are due. They're not all due at once. It's staggered throughout the year, so every month, our GMP staff has a computer program that lets them know which cases are up for auditing that month. So we have them come in in bits, you know, people bring their reports in and our five auditors work pretty hard.
We also have, from time to time, had to tap into some other resources. We have another current court commissioner who has a background as a CPA. So occasionally, we will pull her in to do some audits.
We also had, starting about four years ago, a partnership with Eastern Washington University. We have coupled with some of their master's level accounting programs and they will have students that come in and do auditing for us a quarter at a time. It's not long term, obviously, but they will come in for the quarter and we train them on what they're looking for. And we have certain types of cases that we have them do for us, not the really high amount of states, but they will come in and so they get credits at school for doing this volunteer work and learning the field. And we get a pretty robust group every few months that comes in to kind of give us a boost to our volunteers.
DN: When you look for volunteers, what are the things you're looking for in a particular volunteer? Specific experience?
RA: Not necessarily. We do like people that have a background of some sort in finance, whether that be in a former career that they did something with finance or whether they just understand the keys to, you know, balancing a checkbook. It's interesting that college students, I think today, they don't have that same background. I learned it in high school. We had to learn these things, but really attention to detail. So somebody who could understand a balance sheet, has the ability to process the ins and the outs and has an eye towards what we're looking for with taking advantage of a vulnerable person and commitment.
It's going to be, you know, a time commitment. We ask that they put in at least six months if they devote time to doing this. But other than that, just a passion for wanting to help.
In addition to our volunteers, and we have the folks that are subject to the guardianship or conservatorship, we also have the folks that serve as professional guardians and conservators. A lot of them are attorneys. And then we also have the folks that do the initial investigation to determine and recommend to the court whether this person needs to have a guardianship. Those are court visitors and I'm really involved in that, involved in recruiting our court visitors, training them every year. And it's a great group of professionals that, really, we're all in it to help people.
You don't do this kind of work if you want to be rich. You do it because you care about, you know, your grandma that you knew that got to mention her older age. And you really remember how you wanted to make sure nobody was taking advantage of her. Or you do it because your best friend has an adult child who's living with Down syndrome.
The folks that I've met through the whole system, we support each other. We recognize it's hard work, but it's really rewarding knowing that you're helping people. And we all could look at our lives and know somebody who has probably needed this kind of help at some point.
