ACL is pleased to announce the release of the first ever Research Agenda for Adult Protective Service (APS).
APS is a key provider of intervention and services to older adults and people with disabilities experiencing abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
The goals of this research agenda are to:
- provide guidance to researchers, APS programs, and funders to help move the field forward;
- highlight research gaps to help inform the APS field; and ultimately
- help build a cohesive body of evidence for the APS field.
The Research Agenda features 61 high-priority APS research questions, identified based on rankings by a panel of experts in the field of adult maltreatment. The questions reveal that there are many foundational issues related to APS that remain unanswered, for example:
- What is the impact of caseload size on the quality of APS investigations and interventions?
- What is the impact of interventions for perpetrators on APS client outcomes?
- What is the impact of specialized APS units (for example, units focused on financial exploitation or self-neglect) on investigation outcomes?
ACL hopes that the APS Research Agenda will encourage researchers to partner with APS programs to answer these important questions. Partnerships between researchers and APS programs are essential to ensure that research is relevant and useful to practitioners and reflects the complexities of APS work and the rights of clients.