Florida funds respite care for families caring for someone with a memory disorder. It is real, it is free at the point of use, and there is a waiting list. Getting screened early is the whole game.
The Alzheimer's Disease Initiative is a state programme run through the Department of Elder Affairs. It pays for respite in four forms:
For the 2026 cycle Florida increased ADI funding by $3 million, to a total of $73.8 million. The Community Care for the Elderly and Home Care for the Elderly programmes, which fund adjacent services, went up by $10.5 million to $126.5 million.
Those numbers are worth knowing for one reason: they tell you the programme is being expanded rather than wound down, which affects how long a queue is likely to stay a queue.
Florida's ADI waitlist stood at roughly 17,081 people as of mid-2025, the most recent published figure.
That is the single most important fact in this article, and it leads to one piece of advice: get screened before you need it.
Families routinely call when they have hit a wall — after a fall, after a hospitalisation, after a week without sleep. That is exactly when a queue is least useful. Screening is free, it costs a phone call, and being in the queue when a crisis arrives is a different situation from starting the process during one.
The criteria are not complicated:
Note what is not on that list. There is no requirement that you be related, and the diagnosis belongs to the person you care for, not to you.
Call the Elder Helpline: 1-800-96-ELDER (1-800-963-5337).
That number routes to one of the eleven Area Agencies on Aging covering Florida, based on where you live. Each is also designated an Aging and Disability Resource Center — the ADRC you may have heard mentioned. The regional intake team schedules a screening, and a priority assessment determines where in the queue you land.
Priority is assessed, not first-come. A family in acute difficulty can move.
The call goes faster if you have:
That last point is the one families miss. The intake team can assess you for ADI, for Community Care for the Elderly, and for other supports in the same conversation. Ask them to.
Waiting until you are desperate is the most common mistake, and it is entirely understandable. Nobody wants to claim a place in a queue for help they are still managing without.
Ask the same intake team about adult day programmes with sliding-scale fees, about local nonprofit respite — Central Florida has several, including organisations running caregiver support alongside adult day care — and about whether anyone near you participates in Medicare's GUIDE model, which covers respite through a different funding route entirely and has no state waitlist.
Two funding systems, two queues. Being in both is allowed.
The Florida Department of Elder Affairs publishes the ADI programme details and eligibility, and your Area Agency on Aging is the operational contact for everything above.