State Auditor: KY Not Caring for Wards Properly

More than 25-hundred adults are under the guardianship of the Commonwealth of Kentucky – and most of them aren’t getting the care they need. That’s according to a new report released today by the State Auditor’s Office. Wards of the state are adults who have been declared by the courts as unable to care for themselves or their finances.Auditor Crit Luallen says there should be one state worker for every twenty wards. But in Kentucky, that ratio is one-to-58.She says her office studied numbers from 2007 for the report, so the ratio could be even higher now."It doesn’t even take into account the fact that the cabinet has a severe budget shortfall and is looking at very difficult decisions about all of its program areas, so I don’t expect there would be an immediate ability of this cabinet to increase staff in this area," she said.As a result, Luallen says many of the state’s wards aren’t getting the medical care they need. The report also says in some cases, money belonging to wards is being mismanaged by state workers.