A Message to Our Community

The social adult day program model, as it exists nationally, has become structurally unsustainable. This is not unique to ADAKC. It is a widespread reality affecting similar programs across California and the country.

ADAKC’s Adult Day Program operated as a private-pay, social model program, meaning families paid out of pocket for services. For many, that cost was simply too high to sustain over time. Nationally, public funding has increasingly shifted toward clinical, outcomes-based, and home- and community-based services. Programs like ours, which provide vital social engagement and caregiver respite outside of a medical framework, have been treated as a lower funding priority, even when the research clearly shows their value.

To be direct: this is not a crisis of mismanagement or a sudden financial emergency. It is the result of a funding environment that has not kept pace with the real cost of delivering high-quality dementia day services. After exhausting every available option, the Board and leadership team made the decision that the right path forward was to close the day program and redirect the organization’s full capacity toward a model that can reach even more families.

To every caregiver in Kern County: we see you, we hear you, and we are not going anywhere.

We understand this news is hard. We feel it too. The families in our day program have trusted us with some of their most vulnerable and precious moments, and we do not take that responsibility lightly. Every family has been notified personally, and we have worked hard to connect each one with resources and alternative programs so that no one is left without support.

But our message to caregivers goes beyond those directly affected by the day program closure. There are tens of thousands of families across Kern County living with dementia right now — including Tehachapi and Ridgecrest, in Delano and Wasco, in rural mountain communities and across our Spanish-speaking communities — who have never had access to any dementia-specific support at all. They have been navigating this disease alone, without a navigator, without a support group, without education or guidance.

This new model is built for them too.

Beginning May 4, 2026, ADAKC will operate as a mobile countywide dementia caregiver support hub, offering caregiver navigation, education workshops, countywide support groups, professional dementia training, and community leadership programs. We are coming to where families are, in the language they speak, at the stage of the caregiving journey they are in.

Our goal in year one is to serve more than 1,500 families across Kern County — fifteen times the reach of the prior program. If you are a caregiver and you need support, please reach out. We are here.

At its peak, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Adult Day Program served approximately 50 participants per day. In recent years — since 2024 — daily enrollment has been approximately 20 to 25 individuals. On an annual basis, the program served roughly 100 unique individuals per year.

We want to be clear about what those numbers mean in context. The 20 to 25 individuals attending daily are real people — and their families are real families — and we have taken the closure’s impact on them seriously. Every one of those families has received personal outreach from our team and individualized transition support.

At the same time, those enrollment figures reflect precisely why the model had to change. A county of more than 900,000 residents, with tens of thousands of families living with dementia, was being served by a single facility with 20 to 25 daily participants. The gap between that reach and the actual scale of need in Kern County is the reason this transition exists.

We are sad to see this chapter close. And we are committed to making sure the next one serves this community better than ever.