Outsourcing poor New Yorkers’ care to the Philippines

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

The Filipino social worker on the phone was 8,500 miles away. But it was clear from her tone that she was more concerned about the broken guardianship system in America’s most populous city than most New Yorkers are.

How could it be, she asked me, that judges across the five boroughs can assign a guardian to watch over some of society’s most vulnerable people and know nothing, really, about their appointee’s ability to do the job? Wasn’t there a state agency that licenses the delicate position? Or one that polices guardians to ensure that they follow best practices?

I had called her hoping she could help me answer some of those very questions. She had worked for a company called New York Guardianship Services, one of roughly a dozen organizations that the city relies on to care for its most vulnerable. The firm had outsourced some of these tasks to the Philippines as a cheap way to handle the complicated insurance, banking and health care needs of hundreds of people. The sheer volume of work was overwhelming.

In fact, the social worker found the whole arrangement so unmanageable, she told me, that she quit after six months.

When most people think of guardianships, they think of Britney Spears or Brooke Astor. But my reporting had been driven by a more common experience: What happens to people who aren’t worth millions whom a judge has deemed incapable of managing their own affairs?

Months of digging through court records and interviewing experts, lawyers and others had revealed a heartbreaking answer. New York’s system was in shambles, I was learning, overtaxed and unable to adequately serve the needs of the 28,619 people under its care, more than 60% of whom live in