Volunteer Community Care Corps: Expanding and Refining Models for Volunteer Programs to Support Older Adults, People with Disabilities, and their Family Caregivers

Offering services and supports to older adults or persons with disabilities can enable them to maintain their independence and status in the community. In addition, we recognize that family caregivers provide most of the support that makes it possible for older people and people with disabilities to live in the community. Providing care can take a physical, financial, and emotional toll on family caregivers. Offering assistance to family caregivers can make it easier for them to continue providing care and allows older adults and persons with disabilities the opportunity to remain in the community.In 2019, the Administration for Community Living (ACL) established a new grant program that is testing models of programming designed to place volunteers in communities to assist caregivers, older adults, and persons with disabilities in maintaining independence by providing non-medical care. ACL proposes to continue the Volunteer Care Corps by funding a new one cooperative agreement to a national organization to advance the following broad objectives: • Test person-centered model approaches of delivering local volunteer programming to assist older adults, persons with disabilities and their family caregivers in maintaining their independence. • Evaluate locally developed test models to determine the benefit to volunteers, family caregivers, older adults, and persons with disabilities.• Develop and implement a plan to broadly disseminate proven local models for replication in other communities.