Your Area Agency on Aging: Free Help Most Families Never Use

There’s an office in your county whose only job is helping seniors and caregivers — mostly for free. Have you ever called it?

Every part of Maryland is served by an Area Agency on Aging — each county, including Prince George’s, Montgomery, Howard, Anne Arundel, and Charles, runs aging services for its residents. They’re the front door to: information and referral for local services, caregiver support programs and respite help, senior center programs and meals, free unbiased Medicare counseling through the SHIP program, options counseling for long-term care decisions, and connections to Medicaid community programs. It starts with one phone call: describe your situation and ask, ‘what programs exist for a family like ours?’ Maryland’s aging resource lines can route you to the right county office.

Families routinely pay out of pocket for things a public program would have covered — simply because nobody told them the office existed. Now you know.

This has been Care Without Crisis Explains, presented by Vanguard Care Solutions.

For more free videos and family resources — or when you’re ready to talk about care at home — visit vanguardcaresolutions.com or call 301-327-1444.