Adult protective services cover vulnerable adults: people eighteen or over whose ability to perform ordinary tasks or protect themselves is impaired by age, or by a physical, mental or developmental disability.
The test is capacity and circumstance, not a diagnosis or a birthday. A younger adult with a serious disability is covered; an older adult managing their own affairs is not automatically a vulnerable adult. This page is a plain-language guide. Cases, licences and eligibility decisions are handled by the State of Florida through its own official channels.
Abuse
Wilful acts causing physical or psychological injury.
Neglect
Failure by a caregiver to provide care, supervision or services needed to maintain health — including self-neglect, where an adult can no longer manage their own essential needs.
Exploitation
Using a position of trust to take or misuse an adult's money or property. In practice this is the most common report, and it usually involves a relative rather than a stranger.
An investigator makes contact and assesses immediate safety, then looks at the wider picture: health, capacity, finances and who is involved in the adult's life.
Where risk is confirmed, the usual outcome is services — in-home support, help with medical care, protective supervision — arranged with the adult's agreement wherever capacity allows. Court intervention such as guardianship is a last resort.
A competent adult has the right to make decisions others consider unwise, including the decision to refuse help. Protective services cannot override that simply because a situation looks poor from outside; the threshold is capacity, and establishing that an adult lacks it is a legal process, not an administrative one.