Public forums to advance dependent adult abuse policy

Sponsored forums were hosted to obtain the opinions of invited professionals on how to create the ideal system for protecting dependent adults in Iowa. The purpose of the study was to determine how the forum participants perceive change in the adult protective service system five years after the forums were held. A mailed sixty-nine-item questionnaire sent to the 1,000 forum participants and professionals in the aging network yielded a 30 percent return rate. Ninety-four percent of the items were ranked by more than half of the respondents as important with abuse awareness items scoring the highest. For each item approximately half of the respondents indicated they did not know if a change had occurred.