The Administration for Community Living's Administration on Aging posted a Notice of Funding Opportunity on June 22, 2026, offering up to $4,430,133 total for a three-year project under the Lifespan Respite Care Program: State Grants. The money is meant to help state agencies build or expand statewide respite systems, recruit and train respite workers, and improve caregivers' access to respite services and information; applications are due July 22, 2026, according to the agency's own announcement.
Separately, ACL's Administration on Aging has opened a companion opportunity aimed specifically at dementia caregiving: State and Territory Programs for Dementia-Specific Respite, a new component of the Alzheimer's Disease Programs Initiative. Up to 30 states and territories are eligible to receive a total of up to $2,000,000 per year for a three-year cooperative agreement, according to a funding notice reported by the ARCH National Respite Network and Resource Center, an ACL-affiliated technical assistance center. The track is meant for states that do not yet have a statewide dementia-specific respite program, or that want to expand one already running through their area agencies on aging; applications close August 3, 2026.
The same week, ACL also posted a related notice, Alzheimer's Disease Programs Initiative: Dementia Capable States and Communities, offering up to $1,000,000 per year over three years to expand dementia-capable home and community-based services more broadly, not respite specifically. Taken together, the postings show ACL directing several distinct funding lines toward dementia caregiving support this cycle, though each is a separate, competitive notice with its own scope, ceiling and deadline rather than one combined dementia respite fund.
An ACL announcement from 2022, when the agency first created a national dementia-specific respite cooperative agreement, put the scale of the underlying need at an estimated 11 million unpaid caregivers supporting more than 6 million people living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, a figure the agency said would grow as the population ages.