Respite care exists for a specific, legitimate reason: caring for a child with significant support needs is demanding, and planned breaks help sustain your family's wellbeing over the long term. Here's how respite actually works in Michigan.
What Respite Care Is
Respite care provides short-term, temporary relief for family caregivers — someone else provides care for your child for a defined period, giving you a genuine break, whether that's a few hours, a weekend, or longer. It's a recognized, funded category of support, not an informal favor you have to feel guilty about needing.
How Respite Is Typically Accessed in Michigan
The most common path to funded respite care in Michigan runs through your county's Community Mental Health (CMH) agency. If your child is eligible for developmental disability services through CMH, respite is often one of the services included in their individualized service plan, sometimes with a set number of authorized respite days or hours per year. Eligibility and specific offerings vary by county, so contacting your local CMH office directly is the right first step.
The Children's Waiver Program
Michigan's Children's Waiver Program provides Medicaid funding for services — including respite — that support children with developmental disabilities living at home rather than in an institutional setting. Eligibility is determined through your local CMH agency, and if approved, families can often choose their own respite provider from an approved list.
MDHHS Respite Care Grants
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services also offers respite care grants intended to help family caregivers afford short-term professional respite care directly. These grants are somewhat under-utilized simply because many families don't know they exist — it's worth asking your CMH caseworker or a resource navigator specifically about this option.
What Respite Actually Looks Like
Depending on the program and your family's needs, respite can take different forms: in-home respite, where a trained provider comes to your home to care for your child while you're away or resting elsewhere in the house; out-of-home respite, where your child stays at a licensed respite provider's home or facility for a planned period; and crisis respite, a shorter-term option some CMH-affiliated programs offer specifically during acute family stress, rather than planned, ongoing breaks.
Getting Started
To explore respite options, start with your county's Community Mental Health agency, or ask Michigan Alliance for Families or the Autism Alliance of Michigan's MiNavigator program (1-877-463-AAOM) to help point you toward the right local contact if you're not sure where to start.
You Don't Need to Wait Until You're Overwhelmed
Many families don't look into respite until they're already deep into burnout — but it's worth exploring proactively, before you're at a breaking point. We talk more directly about caregiver wellbeing in Self-Care for Autism Parents (Without the Guilt).
For Ada-Area Families
Our Parent & Caregiver Training service is designed around exactly this kind of goal. If you're in the Ada area and navigating both ABA therapy and the broader demands of caregiving, our in-home ABA therapy in Ada page has more information, or Get Started Today — we're glad to also help point you toward respite and other support resources as part of your family's bigger picture.
This article is part of our complete guide, Why Parent Training Is a Core Part of ABA Therapy. Clinically reviewed by Kimberly Blazer, BCBA.