New York state’s top judicial leaders are moving to reform the state’s troubled guardianship system after a ProPublica investigation found lax oversight allowed court appointees to abuse and neglecting the elderly and infirm New Yorkers they were supposed to protect.

The renewed focus will come from two newly created positions in the state court system: a special counsel for guardianship and elder justice issues, who a spokesperson said will focus on “efforts to statewide adult guardianship system reform”; and a so-called statewide coordinating judge.

More than 28,000 New Yorkers are in the custody of court-appointed guardians, charged with managing the affairs of people deemed incapable of caring for themselves. Under state law, guardians can control the finances and health care of their ward and are paid for their services from funds from their charges. But as ProPublica reported this year, judicial oversight of these officials is threadbare. In New York, for example, there are just over a dozen judges and 157 examiners responsible for supervising guardians and ensuring the well-being of 17,411 people.

Advocates say the people most vulnerable to abuse and neglect are the so-called without friendship — New Yorkers who have no friends or family capable of caring for them. An internal court assessment obtained by ProPublica estimated that they represent 20 percent of all districts in the state. No government agency covers their care. Courts have long relied on a small network of nonprofit organizations and professional tutors for these low-cost or no-cost cases.

The low number of providers, coupled with insufficient numbers of forensic examiners to supervise the work of guardians, has led to neglect, exploitation, and abuse. Woman featured in ProPublica report lived for years in a house without heat and infested with bedbugs and rats — conditions that his legally appointed guardian did not rectify and his examiner did not question. Another guardian spent more than half of her parish’s savings on care provided by her own private company: a blatant conflict of interest that a judge allowed for years.

After ProPublica sent questions about the guardian’s conduct to the court system, a court spokesperson said an inspector general had opened an investigation into the allegations. The spokesperson did not provide further details.

The court system’s actions come as advocates pressure local and state officials to support the guardianship system that they say cannot keep pace with demand for services, particularly among older adults , who are the fastest growing age group in the state. Advocates told lawmakers at a New York City Council hearing last week on elder fraud that the current deal was unsustainable.

“The chronic lack of available guardians has created an untenable situation,” testified Jean Callahan, who chairs a group of judges, lawyers and others involved in the guardianship system called Interdisciplinary Guardianship Work Networks. , or WINGS. “We created an unfunded mandate in New York.”

Callahan was among a half-dozen professionals who urged the City Council to pass a resolution calling on state leaders to create a publicly funded system. The bill’s author, City Council member Crystal Hudson, wrote the measure in response to ProPublica’s reporting. “Now is the time for Governor (Kathy) Hochul to act and strengthen our guardianship system by establishing a public fund to compensate guardians to protect vulnerable New Yorkers in need of protective measures,” Hudson said during the hearing.

His bill approves a $15 million annual appropriation that would support a network of nonprofits that serve the poorest of the non-friends. Guardianship Access New York, a coalition of nonprofits that drafted the proposal, sent a letter last week to Hochul and other top state officials urging them to fund the initiative, which is supported by about two dozen community groups, including AARP New York.

Another plan, suggested by an advisory committee to the state court system, goes much further. He proposes creating an independent statewide agency to serve as guardian for those who have no one else, an undertaking that the group estimates would cost $72 million a year in personnel.

State Sen. Cordell Cleare, who chairs her chamber’s Committee on Aging, said in an interview that she supports overhauling the guardianship system, and she endorsed the more modest proposal to help nonprofit organizations nonprofit caring for befriended people across the state. “Based on everything I’ve looked at and weighed, I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said.

But it’s unclear whether Hochul and state legislative leaders agree. Although they acknowledged the need to care for the state’s growing aging population, none specifically commented on the guardianship issues highlighted by ProPublica or the solutions proposed by advocates. Any reform effort would go through the Senate and Assembly Judiciary Committees, but neither president responded to requests for comment for this story.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the governor said Hochul would review the budget proposals “in January, as required by law.”