Adult foster care: what it is and who it's for
Care in a licensed private home with five or fewer residents.
When it's the right level
Adult foster care is generally the right place to look when the issue is families who want a small household rather than a campus. Care needs change, though, and many communities are licensed for more than one level — what happens when needs increase is the single best question to ask on any tour.
How it's licensed
This category is licensed by the state, which means inspection reports and substantiated violations are usually public records you can read before you tour. Every state names it its own way: Nevada calls it home for individual residential care and Oregon calls it adult foster home.
Where you can browse them
Live coverage, each from that state's own licensing register: Nevada, 144; Oregon, 1,580. Everywhere else is on the coverage map.
What Medicaid pays for this license
This is what a state pays a provider, not a private-pay price, and the two are far apart — what care actually costs, and the hours where staying home costs the same. Rates are set state by state, so they are listed that way — one heading per state, each citing that state's own schedule, and nothing below a heading applies outside the state it names.
Oregon
If she qualifies financially, Oregon pays between $2,332 and $7,773 a month, depending on assessed care tier, plus $773 a month room and board from her own income. Effective July 1, 2026 (Oregon ODHS, Aging and People with Disabilities — Medicaid rate schedule).
Of Oregon's 1,580 communities licensed for this level, 1,306 accept Medicaid — so for most families reading this these are the operative numbers.
Adult foster homes cannot hold a memory-care endorsement. It is layered on an assisted-living or residential-care license, so it does not exist for this license type — which is why our pages for these homes carry no memory-care row. That is not a finding about the home. Many foster homes do care for people with dementia; ask the licensee directly what they are set up for.
Reading the capacity figure
The register publishes licensed capacity — how many residents the license permits — and nothing about how many places are free this week. Ask about openings on the first call: a community with nothing available for four months is not an option however good it looks.
Still deciding?
Here is where adult foster care sits against the other five. The other levels are here: independent living, assisted living, residential care, memory care, nursing homes.
No daily care
Hands-on help most days
Daily medical care
Memory care is a state certification added on top of a community's existing license, not a seventh box — how the six relate.