Henrico County Senior Services: A Family Guide

Most families don't discover Henrico County's senior services until they're already in a crisis, a fall, a missed medication, a caregiver who's suddenly out of options. That's unfortunate, because a lot of what the county and its partner agencies offer is designed for exactly the in-between period: after "everything's fine" but before assisted living feels necessary. This guide maps out what's actually available, what each resource is for, and how to recognize when the landscape of community support has been genuinely maxed out.

Henrico County residents 60 and older have access to a real, if somewhat scattered, network of support: home-delivered meals, transportation assistance, caregiver support groups, in-home care screenings, and Adult Protective Services, most of it coordinated through The Span Center (the region's Area Agency on Aging) and Henrico County's own Advocate for the Aging office.

Start Here: The Span Center, Your Area Agency on Aging

The single most useful phone number for a Henrico family to have is The Span Center: (804) 343-3000. Formerly known as Senior Connections, The Span Center is the federally designated Area Agency on Aging for Planning District 15, which covers Henrico along with Richmond, Chesterfield, Goochland, Hanover, Charles City, New Kent, and Powhatan. Nearly everything described below either comes directly from The Span Center or is coordinated through it.

Beyond the specific programs covered here, The Span Center also offers free preparation of life planning documents (wills, powers of attorney, advance medical directives), scam-prevention education through the Virginia Senior Medicare Patrol, a legal guardianship program, and advocacy for residents already living in nursing homes or assisted living. If you're not sure where to start, this is the number to call first.

Meals on Wheels and Nutrition Support

Feed More and The Span Center jointly run the region's Meals on Wheels program, delivering hot meals to homebound adults 60 and older weekdays between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Meals are tailored to dietary needs, and the daily visit doubles as a safety check and a moment of human contact, which matters as much as the meal itself for an isolated older adult. The service is free, though donations are voluntarily accepted.

This is worth knowing about even for families who aren't currently worried about nutrition, since a missed or skipped delivery, or a volunteer noticing something off during a safety check, is often how early problems get caught before they become emergencies.

Transportation: Getting to Appointments Without Driving

Losing the ability to drive is one of the hardest transitions in aging, and it's also one of the most common reasons independence quietly erodes. The Span Center's Ride Connection program provides transportation assistance, including help getting to medical appointments, for adults 60 and older and for younger adults with disabilities receiving SSI or SSDI. Ride counselors can also help with transportation education and connect families to other local transportation providers beyond what The Span Center offers directly.

For families weighing whether a parent can keep aging in place, transportation is often the deciding factor that gets overlooked until it's already a problem, worth checking into well before it becomes one.

Caregiver Support Groups and Education

Caregiving is exhausting in ways that are hard to explain to anyone who hasn't done it, and Henrico-area caregivers have real, no-cost options for support. The Span Center's Caregiver Support Program offers both in-person and virtual support groups, including groups specifically for caregivers of people with Alzheimer's and related dementias, along with an educational webinar series covering topics like legal documents for caregivers, advocating within the healthcare system, and stress management.

If you're the family member holding most of this together yourself, it's worth reading alongside our piece on balancing caregiving and family life, since burnout is a real and common part of this role, not a sign you're doing it wrong.

Adult Protective Services: When to Be Concerned

Adult Protective Services (APS), run through Henrico County's Department of Social Services, exists specifically to investigate suspected abuse, neglect, or financial exploitation of an adult who can't protect themselves. This is different from general caregiving support: APS involvement is appropriate when there's genuine concern about safety or mistreatment, not simply a need for more help.

To report a concern, call (804) 501-7346 during business hours (Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.), or the 24-hour toll-free hotline at (888) 832-3858 outside those hours. Reports can be made anonymously, and making one doesn't require certainty, just a genuine concern.

Henrico County's Own Resources

Separate from, but closely coordinated with, The Span Center, Henrico County runs its own Advocate for the Aging office, which serves as an information and referral point specifically for Henrico residents 60 and older, their families, and caregivers. The office can help identify which county or regional resource actually fits a specific situation, rather than families having to guess. The county's general Community Resource Line, (804) 501-5294, is another useful starting point for any Henrico-specific question, and 211 Virginia (dial 2-1-1) covers broader statewide referrals.

Henrico also runs the Golden Age Program and a range of senior clubs and leagues through Recreation & Parks, worth knowing about simply for the social and activity value, not just the safety-net function.

Home-Based Services and Long-Term Care Screenings

For families trying to keep a parent safely at home, Henrico's Department of Social Services, through Virginia's Adult Services Program, can connect eligible residents with home-based support: companion care, light housekeeping ("chore" services), and homemaker assistance.

The same office also conducts long-term care screenings, formal assessments used to determine eligibility for nursing facility care or Virginia's Cardinal Care home and community-based waivers. These screenings are a useful, low-pressure way to get an objective read on a parent's actual level of need, even for a family that isn't ready to make any decisions yet.

When These Services Aren't Enough

All of the above genuinely helps, and for a lot of Henrico families, it's enough to make aging in place work well for years. But there's an honest ceiling to what community-based support can do. A few signals that the ceiling has been reached:

Meals on Wheels and check-in visits are catching real problems, missed medications, signs of confusion, unsafe conditions, rather than just delivering food.
Transportation assistance covers occasional appointments but can't address daily supervision needs.
A caregiver is managing more than support groups and respite can realistically sustain.
APS has been involved, or nearly was, because a home situation has become unsafe.
A long-term care screening indicates a level of need that in-home services alone can't cover.

None of that means community resources failed. It means they did exactly what they're designed to do, extend independence as far as it can safely go, and the honest next step is a different kind of conversation. Our guide on it's time for assisted living walks through that transition in more depth, and helping a parent move covers what the process actually looks like once a family has decided.

The Berkeley's Role in This Landscape

We don't think of ourselves as separate from everything above, we think of The Berkeley at Short Pump as one option in a fuller picture that includes The Span Center, Henrico's Advocate for the Aging, and the whole network of community support. Plenty of families use these county and regional resources for years before assisted living ever comes up, and that's exactly how it should work.

When community support genuinely isn't enough anymore, we're glad to talk through what assisted living actually looks like, honestly, and how it might fit alongside what a family is already doing. Get in touch anytime, whether you're ready to tour or just trying to understand your options.

SOURCES:

Henrico County, "Older Adult Services": https://henrico.gov/outreach/older-adult-services/
The Span Center, "Get Help": https://spancenter.org/get-help/
The Span Center, "Meals on Wheels / Home Delivered Meals": https://spancenter.org/service/home-delivered-meals-feedmore/
The Span Center, "Ride Connection": https://spancenter.org/service/ride-connection/
The Span Center, "Caregiver Support": https://spancenter.org/service/caregiver-support/
Henrico County Department of Social Services, Adult Protective Services — reporting line: (804) 501-7346; 24-hour hotline: (888) 832-3858
VirginiaNavigator, "Cardinal Care Waiver Services, Henrico": https://virginianavigator.org/program/29064/cardinal-care-waiver-services-henrico