HARRISBURG — The head of the state Department of Aging traveled to Western Pennsylvania last month to celebrate the system his agency designed to monitor how well vulnerable older adults are being kept safe from abuse and neglect.
During the event, Secretary Jason Kavulich said the Comprehensive Aging Performance Evaluation (CAPE) has revolutionized his department’s ability to assess the 52 county agencies responsible for investigating allegations, mitigating harm, and more.
Those agencies, he added, are improving under the new system.
In making those remarks, Kavulich doubled down on his department’s highly unusual decision to loudly reject the core findings of a recent audit by a top state watchdog, which found CAPE is riddled with deficiencies that potentially leave a vulnerable population at risk of harm.
The agency has called the audit erroneous and unprofessional, and described the timing of its release, weeks before an election, as “craven” politics. It rejected most of the 39 recommendations made by Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor’s office.
If Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who appointed Kavulich, disputes the attacks on DeFoor or the audit, he hasn't said so publicly — despite requests by Spotlight PA to clarify his position.
In public, several county aging agencies have praised CAPE as Kavulich toured the state over the past several months. In private, however, some have called the monitoring system a “pain point” that created unclear expectations and caused frustration and anxiety, according to an internal department study obtained by Spotlight PA.
In a statement, Karen Gray, a spokesperson for the department, said the agency “stands behind its prior statement that the Auditor General’s report is inaccurate.” The department has already taken “deliberate, decisive action to improve its oversight” of county aging agencies by launching CAPE in 2025.
The department also stressed that DeFoor’s office began auditing the system just weeks after its rollout. The final report, the department says, does not capture the full scope of improvements to how it assesses counties — although many of the audit’s findings involve foundational issues that aren’t related to smoothing out kinks or growing pains.
DeFoor’s audit, released in September, found 10 deficiencies in the way the department oversees and monitors the 52 county-based Area Agencies on Aging that conduct investigations into allegations of abuse, neglect, self-neglect, and financial exploitation involving people 60 or older. Some findings echoed problems revealed in a two-year investigative series by Spotlight PA.
The audit focused on two main areas: the ability of CAPE to accurately assess the quality of those investigations; and the training that front-line caseworkers and others at the county level receive in order to carry out their critical duties.
The audit found the department monitors county aging agencies only once every 18 months, rather than annually, as required by state law.
It also found the department is well behind schedule in those assessments. Between the start of 2025 and Oct. 9 of this year, the department monitored just 36 of the 52 agencies. Under the 18-month timeline, the department should have finished assessing all county aging agencies this past June.
The audit also criticized how CAPE scores counties. In the past, the aging department used a tiered system that assigned heavier weights to more serious problems (such as when a county didn’t follow state rules for conducting quality investigations). CAPE weighs all deficiencies the same, which could inflate the quality of a county’s work.
In announcing the audit, DeFoor said the cost of doing nothing is that older adults could be left in dangerous situations without timely assistance from the very network that should keep them safe.
“If the internal controls aren't there to look after the people who can’t take care of themselves, then they’re at risk for neglect, harm, or abuse,” DeFoor said.
Since taking the helm of the Department of Aging, Kavulich has repeatedly asserted that the old system for monitoring counties was subjective and governed by a pass-fail mentality. He has said counties were assigned bad grades for how they complied with state laws governing older adult abuse and neglect investigations, but then given no input on how to fix problems.
Records related to the old and new monitoring systems, as well as interviews with more than a half-dozen former aging department officials, contradict that assertion.
The old approach, often referred to as the legacy system, graded counties on measures derived directly from state regulations, former officials told Spotlight PA. Those rules govern, among other things, how quickly caseworkers must visit an older adult in person after an abuse or neglect allegation is received, and how quickly they must investigate the allegation and provide services to mitigate risk.
DeFoor’s auditors found that under CAPE, the department removed a measure that assessed whether an older adult was left at risk, which they said diminished the emphasis on safety.
Kavulich has argued that there is a distinction between risk and “imminent risk,” and noted that state regulations require county aging agencies to mitigate only the latter. To expect otherwise, state aging officials have countered, would be unsustainable and require them to intervene for every conceivable risk to an older adult.
Yet those state regulations do not clearly define what constitutes immediate risk, leaving room for interpretation — and by extension, potential mistakes when counties investigate abuse and neglect.
Still, DeFoor made clear that his agency’s audit was not an “indictment” of the county aging agencies that employ the front-line workers who conduct those investigations — service that is emotionally and mentally taxing, and often hampered by low pay, growing caseloads, and high staff turnover.
‘An administrative pain point’
County aging agencies have privately expressed frustration with both CAPE and the Department of Aging, according to an internal study obtained by Spotlight PA.
The report was commissioned by the department and conducted by two nonprofit organizations — ADvancing States, which represents state aging departments nationwide; and USAging, which represents the nationwide network of local area agencies on aging.
Months of listening sessions, one-on-one interviews with county aging agency directors, and a follow-up survey sent to every agency informed the report, according to a copy of the document, which captured input from mid-2025 through March of this year.
It found that those agencies reported “critical knowledge gaps” with the new monitoring system. CAPE, those agencies reported back, set unclear expectations, and the department’s guidance on it was erratic or vague.
When counties did get a response from the department, it was slow to arrive and contained inconsistent answers, agencies said. The department’s technical assistance for how counties should deal with CAPE was limited to “read the manual.”
“Unclear expectations with CAPE monitoring create guesswork, rework, and frustration,” the report states, saying counties characterized the system as “an administrative pain point.”
Holly Kyle, who heads the association that represents county aging agencies, told Spotlight PA the study was conducted within the first year of CAPE’s rollout, and thus reflected counties’ angst over a system that was still new and with which they didn’t have much experience.
“Those were point-in-time experiences,” Kyle, interim executive director of the PA Association of Area Agencies on Aging, or P4A, said of county feedback contained in the internal report.
Since then, she said, she’s spoken with directors of county aging agencies who say CAPE monitoring accurately pinpointed their deficiencies and report the department had provided helpful feedback and training.
If the study were conducted today, Kyle said, she believes it would produce vastly different results.
What happens next?
The Department of Aging is not required to implement the auditor general’s recommendations (though it has adopted some, per Gray). But it must submit a response to the office within three months explaining which recommendations it hasn’t acted on and why.
Failure to provide a response, the audit warns, will result in notifications being made to the governor and chairs of the state House and Senate Appropriations Committees, and could jeopardize future funding for the department.
The auditor general’s office, however, has no power to impose any penalties for inaction.
DeFoor’s spokesperson, April Hutcheson, said the public should not allow the department to avoid addressing the problems because it is “uncomfortable with the facts.”
“The repercussions of doing nothing are real,” Hutcheson said, adding: “These are our neighbors and some of the most vulnerable members of our community, and they are at risk.”
Unlike the auditor general’s office, the legislature has the power to force changes at the Department of Aging — as does Shapiro, who appoints department secretaries and directs all major policy decisions.
Late last month, the GOP-controlled state Senate passed legislation with bipartisan support that would, among other changes, adopt new performance metrics for monitoring counties. That includes assessing counties on whether they conducted a comprehensive investigation that covered all areas of abuse, neglect, or exploitation.
Spotlight PA has reported that the comprehensive investigation measure was part of the legacy system’s assessment, but was eliminated when state aging officials designed CAPE.
The bill, authored by state Sens. Jarrett Coleman (R., Lehigh) and Wayne Langerholc Jr. (R., Cambria), is now in the Democratic-controlled House.
The two-year legislative session ends next month, and the chambers are scheduled to be in Harrisburg for only a handful of days between now and then. Any bill that is not voted on and sent to the governor for a signature before then will die at session’s end, and the process to vote on it will begin anew in the next session, which begins in January.
State House Democrats, who generally align closely with Shapiro, were noncommittal when asked whether they intend to take immediate action on the legislation.
Said a House Democratic spokesperson: “We’re reviewing the bill.”