Group-home care model: an emerging trend

Laurie Denker MacNaughton © 2023

For nearly 50 years Charles had been concertmaster to some of the greatest conductors of the age: Sir Thomas Beecham, Leonard Slatkin, Mstislav Rostropovich—to name a few. When I met him his hands, though still lovely and graceful, were mottled by age and quaking with the effects of advanced Parkinson’s disease.

In early 2023 Charles and his wife, Lizbet, made the tough decision to sell their Washington, DC home and move to a condominium just over the river in Virginia. Between downsizing, packing, staging, and showing the home, the stress began to tell on Charles, so he and Lizbet decided it best for Charles to respite at a care facility until they settled on the new property.

Just miles from the new condo was a group home located in a single-family residence, licensed to care for no more than 8 residents. Far more affordable than larger, more traditional care facilities, the group home offered around-the-clock supervision, but no onsite medical care. Residents either continued under care of their own physicians, or contracted care with medical professionals associated with the home.

Group homes go by many different names, and regulations vary by state. However, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2020 there were some 13,000 small-scale, “residential care communities,” the generic term applied to the group home care model. Across the U.S., these homes provide care to some 81,600 residents. This number, of course, represents only a tiny fraction of seniors living in long-term care homes, a number that in 2020 stood at 1,290,000.¹

Nonetheless, the group home care model is unlikely to go away, as the need for residential living communities is projected to accelerate by some 60% over the next 10 years and—according to the US Census Bureau—is already nearly double what it was in 2012.²

Charles joined Lizbet in their new home once they had gone to closing and she had moved in and gotten settled—and they are thankful for the care Charles received while in the group home.

However, not everyone will have the option of going home, as some conditions require more care than an aging spouse can provide.

With this in mind, the more our aging homeowners know about evolving care solutions, the better they are likely to fair—both physically and financially.

¹https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/npals/2020-NPALS-methodology-documentation-508.pdf

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/08/revenues-for-home-care-elderly-services-increase.html