The National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) acknowledges important victories achieved through sustained advocacy efforts while maintaining serious concerns about President Trump’s FY 2026 budget request, and its impact on America’s more than 53 million family caregivers, who provide essential, ongoing care to aging parents, people with disabilities, veterans, and loved ones with serious health conditions.
Recognizing Critical Advocacy Wins
NAC appreciates that the Trump Administration decided to reverse course on earlier problematic proposals that would have severely disrupted services for older adults and their family caregivers. Due to the tremendous advocacy efforts by family caregiving, aging, and disability advocates, the Administration has made several important modifications:
- Preserving Program Integrity: The final budget maintains all Older Americans Act (OAA) programs administered through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) within a single agency—the newly renamed Administration for Children, Families, and Communities—rather than splitting them across multiple agencies. This preserves critical coordination between aging and disability networks and ensures continued collaboration in delivering services to millions of older adults and their family caregivers.
- Protecting Essential Older Americans Act (OAA) Funding: The President’s budget preserves most funding for OAA and other essential programs, including the National Family Caregiver Support Program, the Lifespan Respite Program, and Aging and Disability Resource Centers.
- Maintaining the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program: While the budget preserves OAA’s Title VII Long-Term Care Ombudsman Programs, which provide crucial advocacy and protection for vulnerable older adults and support for their families navigating complex care systems, we are concerned about the proposed nearly 20 percent cut to funding for ombudsman services
Ongoing Concerns and Challenges
While celebrating these advocacy victories, NAC remains vigilant about other aspects of the FY 2026 budget that continue to pose challenges for family caregivers. The budget proposal still includes cuts to vital workforce development programs for older adults, chronic disease management and health promotion activities, and state and community block grant programs that support senior housing and nutrition programs. These unnecessary and harmful cuts would limit access to essential support services and increase strain on already stretched family caregivers.
Family caregivers contribute $600 billion in unpaid labor each year, filling gaps that, if left unaddressed, would result in poorer outcomes and higher costs to our healthcare and long-term care systems. Any weakening of the support structure for caregivers does not save money but rather shifts additional hardship to America’s family caregivers.
These recent victories demonstrate the power of coordinated advocacy and the importance of sustained engagement with policymakers. However, significant work remains ahead. We also recognize the ongoing threats posed by proposed deep cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in reconciliation legislation, which would disproportionately impact the vulnerable populations that family caregivers serve.
NAC urges Congress to build on these wins by rejecting any remaining harmful provisions in the FY 2026 budget and focusing on bold investments in caregivers and our care infrastructure.
