And you thought it was competitive to find day care for your children. The Wall Street Journal had an excellent article yesterday on Finding Day Care – For Your Parents. 

Adult Day Care is increasingly becoming an alternative for the Sandwich Generation who aren’t ready to have their parents in a nursing or retirement home, but don’t have the resources to stay home with them.  Day Care supporters also allude that it is a better alternative because it is safer and more varied in activities.

Currently, Adult Day Care is said to serve more than 400,000 seniors.  Not all attend daily, but that number is expected to grow between 5% and 15% a year according to the WSJ article.  With costs averaging $61 per day (approximately $42 per day more than an in-home health care professional) this isn’t a cheap long term care option which is why more and more insurers are looking at this as an opportunity.

Last year, MetLife began to include adult day care in its annual report.  The WSJ article quotes Kathy O’Brien with MetLife as saying that this type of care “is becoming increasingly recognized within the long-term care community for the array of services available.”

I was interested in learning more about the Adult Day Care industry and found the National Adult Day Services Association.  They are a pretty good resource and have been around for more than 20 years.  The National Adult Day Services Association touts themselves as “the leading voice of the rapidly growing adult day services (ADS) industry and the national focal point for ADS providers.”

I wonder: is this the wave of change for LTC which will eventually drive costs down and become increasingly recognized by insurers and government or will it go back to a luxury for only those who can afford it?