Respite Care in Central Ohio: How Family Caregivers Actually Get a Break

Caregiver burnout doesn't announce itself until it's already a crisis. The programs that could have prevented it — COAAA's Lifespan Respite services, the state's dementia respite line item, volunteer respite, and PASSPORT's respite benefit — exist right now in every county we serve.

By Ray Kessler, Certified Senior Advisor & Family Consultant · Published August 17, 2026

The Break Nobody Schedules

Family caregivers in central Ohio rarely call us asking about respite care by name. They call about something else — a canceled vacation, a missed cardiology follow-up of their own, a marriage under strain, a sibling who's noticed they haven't seemed like themselves. By the time "I just need a break" gets said out loud, most caregivers have been running without one for months, sometimes years, on the theory that asking for help is a step toward giving up. It isn't. Respite care exists precisely so that families caring for a parent at home in Dublin, Reynoldsburg, Lancaster, or Newark can keep doing it — sustainably, for longer, without the caregiver's own health becoming the next crisis.

The confusion is understandable, because "respite" isn't one program in Ohio. It's a patchwork of federal funding, state line items, county levies, and volunteer networks, each with its own entry point. This guide walks through the actual doors central Ohio families can knock on, in the order that tends to make sense.

Start With COAAA's Lifespan Respite and Caregiver Support Program

The Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging administers the National Family Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP) and Ohio's Lifespan Respite funding across its eight-county region — Delaware, Fairfield, Fayette, Franklin, Licking, Madison, Pickaway, and Union. COAAA itself doesn't necessarily deliver every respite hour directly; it funds county partner agencies to do it, and provides information and assistance, one-on-one caregiver counseling, referral, workshops, and respite as part of the same program.

What "respite" means under this umbrella is broader than a single service type. COAAA's own materials describe institutional respite (a short paid stay in a licensed facility), traditional in-home respite (a paid aide who comes to the house), and overnight respite, with county partners given flexibility to also cover supplemental needs like emergency medication costs or a caregiver's travel expenses to reach a parent. The right starting point is a single phone call: 614-645-7250 or 800-589-7277. Ask specifically for the National Family Caregiver Support Program and Lifespan Respite — the intake staff will route you to whichever partner agency handles it in your parent's county, since the delivery mechanism differs by county even though COAAA coordinates funding regionally.

The State's Dementia-Specific Respite Funding

If the person you're caring for has Alzheimer's or another dementia, there's a second, more targeted door. Ohio's state budget appropriates a dedicated Alzheimer's and Other Dementia Respite line item, distributed to Ohio's twelve Area Agencies on Aging, and each AAA is required to pass a portion of that funding through to its local Alzheimer's Association chapter. In practice, that means both COAAA and the Alzheimer's Association Central Ohio Chapter administer pieces of the same state dollars, which is part of why families get bounced between the two if they don't ask the right question up front.

Because chapter-level respite grants — their size, their eligibility rules, whether they're currently open to new applicants — change from year to year and can run out of funding before the fiscal year ends, the only reliable way to know what's available right now is to call the Alzheimer's Association Central Ohio Chapter directly and ask what dementia respite funding is currently open, rather than assuming a program a friend used last year is still funded the same way today.

Volunteer Respite: A Different Kind of Help

Not every family needs — or can afford — a licensed paid aide for a few hours a week. Central Ohio also has a Caregiver Volunteer Respite Program that matches trained volunteers, typically age 55 and over, with family caregivers for a regular weekly visit. The volunteer sits with the older adult; the caregiver gets a predictable window of free time, unpaid, built around whatever that caregiver actually needs it for — a grocery run, a doctor's appointment of their own, or simply an uninterrupted hour. It's not a substitute for hands-on personal care, and slots depend on volunteer availability in a given county, but for caregivers whose main problem is isolation and a lack of any scheduled break, it can matter more than a bigger, more clinical program would.

Where PASSPORT's Respite Benefit Actually Fits

Families who already have a parent enrolled in PASSPORT, Ohio's Medicaid waiver alternative to nursing home care, often don't realize respite is one of the home and community-based services a PASSPORT care plan can authorize. The catch is the same one that applies to PASSPORT generally: it's only available to people who already meet PASSPORT's financial and functional eligibility criteria, so it isn't a stand-alone benefit a caregiver can request independently of the broader waiver. For families who haven't yet qualified — or who are fairly sure their parent's income puts Medicaid out of reach — the county levy and COAAA-funded respite programs described above are the more realistic first stop, since eligibility for those generally isn't tied to Medicaid income limits.

Paid Short Stays at a Licensed Community

A different form of respite happens outside the public funding system entirely: many central Ohio assisted living and memory care communities accept short-term respite guests, billed nightly, for anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks. Families use these stays around a planned surgery or hospitalization, a wedding or vacation the caregiver couldn't otherwise attend, or — often overlooked — as a low-stakes way to see how a parent actually does in a community before committing to a permanent move. Availability, minimum-stay length, and pricing are set by the individual community, so this is a direct call to admissions rather than something COAAA or the state coordinates. If your family is weighing a short paid stay against home-based respite, our care type comparisons page walks through how the two options actually differ in practice.

Respite Versus Adult Day Programs

Adult day programs sometimes get lumped in with respite, and the overlap is real — both give a caregiver hours back in the day. The distinction worth knowing is that adult day programs are typically a recurring, scheduled daytime service a parent attends regularly (often several days a week, structured around meals and activities), while respite is framed around the caregiver's need for relief and can be a single overnight, a week-long stay, or an ongoing weekly volunteer visit. Families juggling both a job and caregiving often end up using both — adult day during the work week, respite for the occasional overnight or longer break. Our full guide to adult day programs in the Columbus area covers that option in depth.

Making the First Call Easier

The single biggest barrier we see isn't availability — it's that caregivers wait until they're in crisis to ask, and then the intake process, the eligibility screening, and the wait for an opening all happen on top of an emergency instead of ahead of one. The programs above generally work better, and open faster, when a family calls before the caregiver is at a breaking point. Before you call, it helps to know three things: which county your parent actually lives in (funding and delivery are organized by county, not by where you as the caregiver live), roughly how many hours a week of relief would actually change your situation, and whether dementia is part of the picture, since that opens the separate state funding line. With those three answers ready, a single call to COAAA at 614-645-7250 can often screen for several of these programs at once.

Program funding, eligibility rules, and availability change from year to year and even mid-year as budgets are spent down — everything above reflects what these agencies and the state of Ohio publish at the time of writing, and should be confirmed directly with COAAA, the Alzheimer's Association Central Ohio Chapter, or the relevant county agency before you plan around it. Nothing here is medical, legal, or financial advice.

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