Adult Family Care: A Homelike Environment for Community-Based Care

Adult family care (AFC) provides a 24-h home care and community integration for older persons and individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities. AFC providers manage and sometimes own the facility in which care is provided; thus, they play a central role in the AFC resident experience. This chapter provides a brief history of AFC and presents findings from a qualitative study that explored experiences of AFC providers, including how they navigated their own personal circumstances and systemic conditions to provide a homelike care setting for their residents. Interviews were conducted with 26 AFC providers from North Carolina and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Providers leveraged their abilities and resources as they invested their expertise, time, and relationships to support the residents’ experiences. The providers’ abilities to support family-like relational ties and resident empowerment allowed an opportunity for providers to be supported by the care context itself, which resulted in greater sustainability of their care efforts and AFC home. Findings suggest the importance for states, as well as the general public, to recognize how much providers are giving and investing in their residents and to support AFC providers in their efforts to provide residents a homelike environment in which to live and thrive.