Caregivers for older Mainers are facing mounting challenges
Maine’s Caregivers Carry the Weight of an Aging Population
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Biddeford, Maine—When Marvella Heard drove into her hometown in upstate New York last year, she did not expect to find her father, a 79‑year‑old former Navy veteran and federal prison employee, living in a “filth” of a house with no food, clean clothes, or even recognition of her. The discovery set her on a decade‑long quest to secure housing, medical care and financial stability for a father who would later be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and heart disease.
“He was living in filth when I got there,” Heard, now 56, told reporters. “He had no food, no clean clothes. He didn’t recognize me at first.” She became his legal guardian and fought with family members, government officials and social‑service agencies while balancing a career and her own household. “I was treated awfully — the system didn’t support me at all,” she said. “We had confrontations again and again, and I just wanted to take care of my dad.”
By December, she had moved Samuel into her Biddeford home, where they now keep a steady schedule of medical appointments, grocery shopping, barber visits and adult‑daycare sessions. The father’s daily routine is now guided by an AgeMaine‑affiliated facility, the Samuel L. Cohen Center, and the daughter’s own perseverance. Yet the cost of caring has been steep: about $3,000 spent on the father’s behalf and a personal toll that has left Heard feeling “burned out because nobody is taking care of me.”
The Heard family’s experience is a microcosm of a larger trend. In 2025, an estimated 310,000 Mainers provided the full‑time equivalent of 220 million unpaid hours of care for aging or disabled adult family members—a value of $5.5 billion, more than double the $2.2 billion paid by 178,000 Mainers in 2015. Nationwide, the value of adult family caregiving has risen from $470 billion to $1 trillion in the same period, while the number of caregivers increased 22.5 % from 40 million to 59 million, according to the AARP‑National Alliance for Caregiving report Caregiving in the US 2025.
Maine’s demographic profile makes it particularly vulnerable. Roughly 25 % of the state’s 1.4 million residents are 65 or older, and the state faces a shortage of 2,300 direct‑care workers, according to the Maine Center for Economic Policy. “The long‑term care system would crumble without those family caregivers,” said AARP Maine State Director Noël Bonam. “Whether what they do is big or small, without caregivers spending hours and personal resources while juggling other responsibilities, the system would collapse.”
The burden is not only emotional. About 60 % of caregivers hold jobs outside the home, and roughly 30 % are part of the sandwich generation—caring for both aging parents and children. Many must juggle work hours with caregiving duties, often at the cost of career advancement or job retention. Amanda Rector, a state economist, warned that “there’s been a tremendous increase over the past 10 years and that’s just going to continue.” She added that as the population ages, the ratio of caregivers to workers will worsen, making employer support essential.
Maine’s policy tools, however, lag behind the demand. While some MaineCare recipients can receive funding to pay a family member, the program imposes stringent restrictions. The State Respite Care Program offers grants for occasional help with dementia patients, but the waiting list is long. A new state‑wide paid family and medical leave program has recently provided some relief, with 11.6 % of 4,720 approved claims in the first three months of the program (April‑June) citing care for seriously ill family members.
On the federal level, advocates push for a non‑refundable tax credit of up to $5,000 for eligible working caregivers, covering 30 % of qualified expenses. In Maine, a typical
