"Without a standing body to identify key policy and practice issues and to coordinate reform implementation, change is not likely to occur," the report says.
The report also notes a widespread and longstanding call for guardianship forms to be "standardized, simplified and made accessible to the public."
The current lack of standardization, the report observes, makes it difficult to train lay guardians on reporting obligations and creates problems for attorneys handling cases in different counties.
The report notes that while guardians have to visit their wards four times a year and report back to court examiners, neither court personnel nor court examiners necessarily check to see how the wards are doing.
To address that issue, the report recommends a pilot program where volunteers visit people under guardianship.
"Should the pilot prove successful, a longer-term goal would be the establishment of a not-for-profit organization dedicated to interdisciplinary monitoring of guardianships," the report says. "Such an organization would help train and supervise students from disciplines such as social work, law and accounting, retirees and other volunteers."
It also suggests that a Guardianship Ombudsman Office be established.
Diller said she was "optimistic" the report—meant to reach court officials and lawmakers—would spur changes because it comes at a time when consensus was forming "that there are real ways to improve the system."
The report acknowledges that some of its recommendations would be "major changes." But its says that many of its suggestions were "operational tweaks that could be fairly quickly accomplished with great benefit to parties and the courts alike."
One such tweak, said Diller, would be to post simplified and standardized forms online, which "can be done relatively cheaply and relatively easily and could make things much more accessible for a lot of people."
@|Andrew Keshner can be contacted at akeshner@alm.com.
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