This story was originally produced by the New Hampshire Bulletin, an independent local newsroom that allows NHPR and other outlets to republish its reporting.
During a meeting meant to address safety gaps in New Hampshire’s disability care system, a group of care providers said they believe the state doesn’t have enough investigators looking into abuse and neglect.
“There’s too few investigators,” Michelle Donovan, the New Hampshire director for the care agency Living Innovations, said. “Quite frankly, there’s not enough people to handle the amount of work. It sometimes takes up to six months to get results, which could leave someone hanging out there.”
Living Innovations is among the many providers the state contracts with to care for New Hampshire’s adult developmental disability population. This care often comes in the form of residential care or day programming. When there is a report of abuse, neglect, or exploitation committed against a person with disabilities within this system, an investigator from either the Bureau of Adult and Aging Services or the Office of Client and Legal Services looks into the allegations. Thursday’s meeting, which brought three different agency executives to a panel in Concord, was one of several called by the state’s System Review Committee in response to a series of Bulletin articles outlining rampant abuse, neglect, and untimely deaths occurring within this network.
Rob Gillis, associate director of Monadnock Worksource in Peterborough, said his agency was notified about a complaint on Dec. 10 that’s still being investigated. Gillis said this time period, in which agencies are instructed to “safeguard the situation” until investigators come to a conclusion, can be challenging.
“Typically, it is a situation that we respond to very quickly,” Gillis said. “But it is also a situation that is difficult sometimes, because what does ‘safeguard the situation’ mean, other than removing the person from their home who may not want to be removed from the home, and if it’s an unfounded situation, they were removed from the home without cause. And that, again, causes confusion and puts people in limbo, sometimes for an extended period of time.”
Donovan, who is also president of the Private Provider Network trade association, said Living Innovations had a complaint filed against one of its employees on Feb. 5 and the Bureau of Adult and Aging Services didn’t get back to them until March 25. She said that her agency immediately takes action even before the investigative results come back, but it leaves the employee “in jeopardy for that period of time.”
The providers argued that if the state had more staff investigating abuse, neglect, and exploitation, they would be able to more quickly take decisive action to terminate an abusive employee or clear an employee whose allegations were deemed unfounded.
State records obtained by the Bulletin show there were 548 founded reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation (though the Department of Health and Human Services told the Bulletin last month that it discovered its own records may include overcounts due to duplicative data, but officials have yet to provide an updated number) from 2023 through 2025. There were also 144 deaths in this system across the same time period, according to the records.
Gillis also said he was “surprised” to learn that founded incidents of abuse and neglect stay on the Bureau of Adult and Aging Services’ registry for only seven years before being removed.
The providers were also concerned that there is no database they can access that will tell them if a person they are trying to hire has been caught abusing or neglecting a client.
“We do not have a centralized place where we can source information,” Renu Basur, managing director of Siddharth Services Inc. in Manchester, said. “When something happens in one agency, the other agency doesn’t know, and then the person who was responsible in this agency would transfer and go and work in a different setting.”
Basur suggested the state develop a centralized registration platform so workers’ backgrounds, training, work commitments, and other information could be tracked. Currently, Basur explained, an agency needs the employee’s consent to check on them through the Adult Protective Services’ registry even when that person is employed or contracted by the agency. Additionally, in the immediate aftermath of an incident, it takes time for an abuse or neglect finding to be made and published. In the meantime, that person might find another job at a different care agency. Basur believes the agency should be allowed to find out whether a job candidate is in the middle of an investigation.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are currently debating changing that. Senate Bill 670, which was filed in response to abuse and neglect in the disability system, would change state policy to put people on the Bureau of Adult and Aging Services registry while an investigation plays out and remove them if investigators deem their allegations unfounded. That bill has passed the Senate and is now being debated by the House.
House lawmakers have discussed amending the bill to also address the seven-year expiration date for abuse and neglect findings in the registry, but no such amendment has been put forth. The bill has a number of other provisions aimed at increasing oversight of this system.
