Our History

Project Guardianship was born in 2005 as a social justice initiative of the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera). In partnership with the New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA), Vera launched a pilot program called The Guardianship Project to fill a gap in the guardianship and elder services safety net for New Yorkers.

With OCA, Vera created an agency guardianship model to provide high-quality services for a largely low-income population of aging adults and people with disabilities who lack family or other supports. Since our founding, the pilot has demonstrated that a program centered on human dignity can enable people with little resources and support to live more independently, while also saving public dollars.

In 2020, The Guardianship Project became Project Guardianship, Inc., an independent organization.

Today, Project Guardianship offers the most comprehensive model of legal guardianship available — serving clients regardless of their ability to pay and provides services for the court’s most complex cases in New York City. We also share research and recommendations for a better guardianship system and advocate for a more equitable response to providing services for people in need of protective arrangements.