Older Americans Act Legal Assistance

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reports that today one in six Americans, or 44 million people, is age 60 years or older, including four million people age 85 and older. Since 1965 America has legislatively recognized that the future would present greater and greater numbers of individuals in this category, and in response passed the Older Americans Act (OAA) to create a system to deliver the service needs by older Americans and their families.

The Older Americans Act established the U.S. Administration on Aging (AoA) within the Department of Health and Human Services and provided state grants for planning, research and service delivery. Later amendments created a system of dividing the country into area agencies on aging to provide for local service planning and administration of funding provided for delivery of services.

The OAA was most recently reauthorized in the fall of 2006. The stated goals of the act are to assist older Americans to secure equal opportunity to income; physical and mental health care; suitable housing; restorative services; community-based services; employment opportunity; retirement in health, honor and dignity; participation in meaningful civic, cultural, educational, training and recreational opportunities; low-cost transportation; immediate benefit from proven research to sustain and improve health and happiness; freedom, independence, and the free exercise of individual initiative in planning and managing their own lives; and protection against abuse, neglect, and exploitation. (42 U.S.C. 3001).

Legal assistance is one of many services required to accomplish the goals of the OAA. The Act requires state plans to contain assurances that area agencies on aging will give priority to legal assistance related to income, health care, long-term care, nutrition, housing, utilities, protective services, defense of guardianship, abuse, neglect, and age discrimination.  Services are available to individuals 60 and over, and although no income tests are used for OAA legal assistance, the act requires that these priority services be targeted to older Americans with greatest economic and social need. Prohibited activities by OAA legal assistance providers include criminal and fee-generating cases.  There is no charge for services, but recipients must be given an opportunity to make a donation to the program.

Besides counsel and advice and representation, a component of OAA Legal Assistance is community legal education designed to educate seniors and caregivers on topics of particular interest to seniors.

Regulations that have been promulgated over the years require area agencies to select providers who demonstrate the capacity to provide effective administrative and judicial representation in the areas of law affecting older adults with economic or social need and shall; demonstrate the capacity to provide support to other advocacy efforts such as the ombudsman and the adult protective services programs; demonstrate the capacity to provide services effectively to older adults and persons with disabilities and to older adults who are institutionalized, isolated, and homebound; demonstrate the capacity to provide services in the principal language spoken by individuals of the area; and assure that other legal activities will not be a conflict of interest or interfere with their professional contracted responsibilities (45 CFR 1321.71).

To see if Davis & Neal provides Legal Assistance in the region where you live, see our Area Agency on Aging Partners at this site.