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Does respite care help?
Caregivers who use respite often say it helps, and some studies found less stress. But the best-controlled trials have not shown a clear benefit, mainly because there are so few of them. That is a gap in the research, not proof that a break does nothing.
What the studies found
The most careful summary is a Cochrane review from 2014. It found only 4 randomized trials, with 753 participants between them. The trials that compared respite with no respite found no significant benefit on any caregiver outcome, including caregiver burden and how soon the person moved into a nursing home. The reviewers rated the quality of the evidence as very low. [1]
An earlier review, published in the journal Health Technology Assessment, looked at twenty-two studies of community respite, including day care. It found the effects on carers and on the people they look after were generally small, with the better-controlled studies finding modest benefits only for some groups. Day care cost at least as much as usual care. [2]
Some studies did find a benefit. In a 1998 study, family caregivers who used a lot of adult day care had lower scores for overload, strain, depression and anger after 3 months than caregivers who did not use it, and lower overload and depression after a year. People were not assigned to the two groups at random, so the groups may have differed in other ways too. [3]
What seems to make a break work
Newer studies look at how the time is used, not only whether it happens. In one, caregivers who met the goals they had set for their respite time rated that time as more satisfying a week later. That held whatever the number of respite hours. [4]
A 2025 study of 143 caregivers using an app to plan their respite found gains in the positive side of caregiving over 20 weeks. The gains were larger for women, for lower-income households and for people providing at least 80% of the care. The study's summary describes no comparison group, so it cannot show the app caused the change. [5]
When 15 people (four living with dementia and 11 carers) were interviewed about in-home respite, what they asked for was trust in the staff and the organisation, consistency, and clear, open communication. [6]
What the research has not settled
Whether respite delays a move into a nursing home, or makes life better for the person with dementia, is not settled. The Cochrane review found that only one of its trials reported any outcome for the person with dementia at all. Most of what exists measures caregiver stress over weeks or months, in small studies. [1]
None of this is a reason to go without a break. It means no one can promise what a break will change, and that the research has not caught up with the question.
The studies this page draws on
- Respite Care for People With Dementia and Their Carers
- A systematic review of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different models of community-based respite care for frail older people and their carers
- Stress reduction for family caregivers: effects of adult day care use
- Respite time-use among dementia caregivers
- Improving Respite Outcomes for Caregivers: Who Benefits and Under What Conditions?
- Trust, consistency and transparency: in-home respite needs and preferences of people living with dementia and their carers
More from the research library
59 of the library's 27,380 studies match; 13 have it in the title. Studies already listed above are not repeated. The 8 shown are the title matches first, then the highest-scoring.
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Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Adult Day Services and the Families They Serve
The COVID-19 pandemic forced adult day services (ADS) to close and abruptly end in-person services to clients.
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A controlled study of respite service for caregivers of Alzheimer's patients
After a baseline interview of 642 caregivers of aged Alzheimer's disease victims, half were offered formal respite care.
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Assessing the Time for Living and Caring (TLC) Study: Mixed-Methods Feasibility Study of a Web-Based Caregiver Intervention to Improve Respite
The TLC study used an appropriate design and data collection procedures, along with acceptable recruitment capability.
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In-home respite care in dementia: An evolutionary concept analysis
Thirty-one articles were included. This conceptual analysis revealed the evolution of in-home respite care service content over time and summarized three key attributes.
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Addressing Caregivers’ Needs beyond Respite: Enhancing Social Connections and Letting Them Know They Matter
Respite for individuals caring for family living with dementia is a common way to take personal time away from caregiving.
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Bridging the Digital Divide: Community-Engaged Strategies for Implementing Technology in Rural Adult Day Centers
Successfully embedding technology into long-term care settings requires intentional, evidence-based community engagement strategies that address the unique needs of providers, caregivers, and persons living with dementia.
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How and why adult day programs influence admissions to long-term care homes for persons living with dementia: A program theory based on a realist review
Contexts and mechanisms associated with attendees’ and caregivers’ social determinants of health, and system-level contexts and mechanisms that influence ADPs are important knowledge gaps to be addressed by studies and to be incorporated in our program theory in the future.
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Effects of Cognitive Training on Cognition and Quality of Life of Older Persons with Dementia
Mentions it: “Setting Adult day care centers in Helsinki, Finland.”
How a study gets onto this list: its own title, summary, findings or note contains one of these terms — respite, adult day care, adult day services or centres. A study matched only in its text is shown with the sentence that matched, word for word. A score rates how much weight a study can bear, not whether its result is good news: how we score a study.