[Federal Register Volume 86, Number 36 (Thursday, February 25, 2021)]
[Notices]
[Pages 11543-11544]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2021-03863]


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DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Administration for Community Living


Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for OMB 
Review; Public Comment Request; Inventory of Adult Protective Services 
Practices and Service Innovations

AGENCY: Administration for Community Living, HHS.

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: The Administration for Community Living is announcing that the 
proposed collection of information listed above has been submitted to 
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance as 
required under section 506(c)(2)(A) of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 
1995. This 30-Day notice collects comments on the information 
collection requirements related to requirements related to a new 
information collection 0985-New Inventory of Adult Protective Services 
Practices and Service Innovations.

DATES: Submit written comments on the collection of information by 
March 29, 2021.

ADDRESSES: Submit written comments and recommendations for the proposed 
information collection within 30 days of publication of this notice to 
www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. Find the information collection by 
selecting ``Currently under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' 
or by using the search function. By mail to the Office of Information 
and Regulatory Affairs, OMB, New Executive Office Bldg., 725 17th St. 
NW, Rm. 10235, Washington, DC 20503, Attn: OMB Desk Officer for ACL.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Stephanie Whittier Eliason, 
Administration for Community Living, Washington, DC 20201 Phone: (202) 
795-7467, Email: [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: In compliance with 44 U.S.C. 3507, ACL has 
submitted the following proposed collection of information to OMB for 
review and clearance. The Administration for Community Living (ACL) is 
requesting approval for a new information collection 0985-New Inventory 
of Adult Protective Services Practices and Service Innovations. The 
Elder Justice Act of 2009 requires the Secretary of the U.S. Department 
of Health and Human Services to carry out a number of activities 
related to adult protective services (APS) (42 U.S.C. 1397m-1), 
including developing and disseminating information on APS best 
practices and conducting research related to the provision of APS.
    Furthermore, the Elder Justice Coordinating Council included as its 
third recommendation for increasing federal involvement in addressing 
elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation: ``develop a national APS system 
based upon standardized data collection and a core set of service 
provision standards and best practices.''

Background

    The Administration for Community Living (ACL) in the U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to initiate an 
Inventory of Adult Protective Services Practices and Service 
Innovations (APS Practice Survey) in early 2021. Under a contract with 
ACL, the National Adult Protective Services Technical Assistance 
Resource Center (APS TARC) is conducting a national program evaluation 
of APS programs. As part of this evaluation, the APS Practice Survey 
will identify barriers to meeting policy mandates, and practice 
innovations and model programs that address such barriers and 
community-identified needs. It also seeks to identify practice 
variations in the way APS programs serve older adults and adults with 
disabilities. The results of the survey will serve to advance the field 
of APS and will be useful to many audiences. It will provide baseline 
information regarding the status of APS programs and services, and the 
resulting information will help states and territories compare their 
program characteristics with those of other states and territories. The 
survey will provide a context for other researchers examining APS 
programs. It will inform ACL's efforts to support improvement of APS 
programs through activities such as innovation grants. Finally, it will 
inform the APS TARC team's efforts to develop resources to enhance APS 
programs around the country. This survey has been developed to gather 
information on APS practices that is not available from other sources. 
As part of the National Adult Maltreatment Reporting System (NAMRS), 
ACL collects descriptive data on state and territory agency policies 
through the Agency Component of that data collection.
    Therefore, the proposed survey will not collect any background 
policy or data items. As part of the APS Program Evaluation, the APS 
TARC also conducted a detailed examination of state APS policies 
through development of individual state policy profiles. The profiles 
were based exclusively on extant information sources obtained without 
additional data requests from

[[Page 11544]]

the states. Information on practices gathered in this survey will 
complement, but will not duplicate, these policy profiles.
    Finally, the National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA) 
conducted a survey of State APS programs in 2012, and the National 
Association of State Units on Aging and Disability (NASUAD) fielded a 
survey to its members, which are not APS programs, in January 2018 
intended to update findings from the NAPSA 2012 survey. Since the 
survey replicates the original NAPSA survey, the questions in it are 
not focused on APS practice and are not directed at the same 
respondents as the proposed survey. As noted, a few topics in the 
original survey overlap with the proposed instrument, but the wording 
and focus of the few questions on similar topics are different. From 
this analysis, we conclude the proposed APS Practice Survey will yield 
vital information on APS practice not available from other sources.

Proposed Collection Efforts

    The APS Practice Survey will collect state- and territory-specific 
practices for all aspects of APS casework practice, including staffing, 
intake, investigation, service planning and delivery, and quality 
assurance. Across these areas, the survey will collect information on 
practices such as community partnerships and use of assessment tools.
    The APS Practice Survey will be administered online using 
SurveyMonkey or a similar commercial survey-programming tool. The 
online survey will include data validation routines to minimize errors 
or unintentional omissions and will include appropriate skip patterns 
to reduce burden. Respondents will be state and territory APS agencies, 
including APS agencies in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, 
Northern Marianas Islands, Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. No 
personally identifiable information will be collected.
    A pilot version of The APS Practice Survey was tested in nine (9) 
diverse states between July and September 2017. Following their pretest 
of the survey instrument, pilot respondents participated in focus 
groups in which they provided recommendations on data collection 
procedures, views on the availability of data being requested, and 
estimates of the burden to each state and territory for completion of 
the survey. It is assumed that nearly every state and territory will 
participate and that time to develop a response will be similar to the 
experience of states during the pilot test. ACL has calculated the 
following burden estimates based on the results of the survey pilot 
test.

Comments in Response to the 60-Day Federal Register Notice

    A notice published in the Federal Register on December 1, 2020 in 
85 FR 77218.
    Estimated Program Burden: ACL estimates the annual burden 
associated with this collection of information as follows:

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                                                                     Number of    Average burden
                   Instrument                        Number of     responses per     hours per     Total burden
                                                    respondents     respondent       response          hours
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APS Practice Survey.............................              56               1            3.50             196
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    Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours.........  ..............  ..............  ..............             196
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    Dated: February 19, 2021.
Alison Barkoff,
Acting Administrator and Assistant Secretary for Aging.
[FR Doc. 2021-03863 Filed 2-24-21; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4154-01-P