A plain-language guide to what the Atlanta Regional Commission Area Agency on Aging covers across Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee counties — and where families still need to look elsewhere.
By ATL Senior Advisor Care Team · August 18, 2026
The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) Area Agency on Aging is the federally designated planning-and-service body for the 10-county metro-Atlanta region, covering Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, Cherokee, Clayton, Douglas, Fayette, Henry, and Rockdale counties. It is not a Medicaid office, a hospital department, or a facility placement service — it is the local arm of the Older Americans Act network, funding and coordinating programs like information and referral, care coordination, caregiver support, and congregate and home-delivered meals. Families calling ARC's Aging and Disability Resource Connection (ADRC) line for the first time are often surprised to learn it doesn't run its own nursing homes or assisted living communities; instead it funds and contracts with a network of local providers who deliver the actual services.
Understanding that structure matters because it shapes what a phone call to ARC can and can't resolve in a single conversation. A caregiver in Sandy Springs looking for immediate placement help for a parent leaving Northside Hospital will get a different kind of answer than a caregiver in Marietta asking about a home-delivered meals waiting list. ARC's staff can screen for eligibility, explain which programs exist, and route a family to the right contracted agency, but they are a coordination layer, not a single point of service delivery — which is the single biggest misunderstanding families bring to that first call.
Where ARC is strongest is information, benefits counseling, and connecting families to the right program before a crisis forces a rushed decision. Its ADRC information line can screen a caller for the Community Care Services Program (CCSP), Georgia's core Medicaid home- and community-based waiver, and route qualifying seniors toward an assessment. It also coordinates GeorgiaCares, the state's free SHIP Medicare counseling program, which is genuinely useful for a Gwinnett County family in Lawrenceville trying to compare Medicare Advantage plans during open enrollment without paying an insurance broker. ARC additionally funds senior centers, congregate meal sites, home-delivered meals, and evidence-based caregiver-support classes across the region, and its staff can tell a family in Decatur exactly which DeKalb County senior center runs a program near them.
ARC is also a reliable first stop for benefits counseling that isn't specific to long-term care — SNAP applications for seniors, utility assistance referrals, and legal-aid referrals for elder-law issues like power of attorney or guardianship questions. For a Cherokee County family in Woodstock trying to figure out whether a parent qualifies for anything beyond Medicare, a single ADRC call can map out several programs at once rather than requiring five separate applications. This triage function — turning a vague 'what help exists for my mom' question into a concrete list of next steps — is where the agency earns its reputation as the right first call.
ARC does not place residents into specific assisted living communities or Personal Care Homes, does not manage a facility's day-to-day care, and does not investigate individual facility complaints — that regulatory role belongs to the Georgia Department of Community Health, Healthcare Facility Regulation Division (DCH/HFRD). A family in Buckhead comparing two Assisted Living Communities still has to do that side-by-side research and touring themselves, or work with a private placement agency; ARC can point toward a facility search resource but won't recommend one address over another. Similarly, ARC does not administer Medicaid eligibility determinations directly — CCSP and SOURCE applications ultimately route through the Georgia Division of Aging Services and the Division of Family and Children Services, with ARC functioning as the local access and coordination point rather than the final decision-maker.
ARC also isn't an emergency crisis line. A family managing a same-day hospital discharge from Piedmont Atlanta Hospital or Emory University Hospital typically needs the hospital's own discharge planner or social worker first, because ARC's intake and screening process, while free, isn't built for immediate placement in a 24-to-48-hour window. And for suspected abuse or neglect, the right call is Adult Protective Services through the Georgia Division of Aging Services, not ARC's general information line — ARC can transfer a caller there, but it isn't the reporting agency itself. Knowing this division of labor in advance saves a caregiver from calling the wrong number during an already stressful week.
Families get the most out of an ARC ADRC call by having specific information ready: the senior's county of residence, a rough sense of income and assets (for Medicaid-program screening), current insurance coverage, and a clear one-sentence description of the immediate need — whether that's meals, transportation, caregiver respite, or benefits counseling. A Cobb County caller in Marietta who opens with 'I need help figuring out if my father qualifies for any Medicaid home-care program, and I also need a caregiver support group nearby' will typically get routed faster and more usefully than a caller who only says 'my dad needs help.'
It's also worth asking directly which parts of a request ARC can handle in-house versus which require a referral elsewhere, since ARC staff are generally upfront about the boundary once asked. For a DeKalb County family near Emory Decatur Hospital juggling both a Medicaid CCSP question and a facility-licensing question about a specific Personal Care Home, that single call might resolve the CCSP piece directly while pointing the licensing question to DCH/HFRD's online facility search — two different answers from two different agencies, coordinated through one starting phone number.
ARC works alongside, not instead of, several other agencies families in Metro Atlanta will likely need. The Georgia Division of Aging Services (DAS) sets statewide policy and administers Adult Protective Services; DCH/HFRD licenses and inspects Personal Care Homes and Assisted Living Communities; the Georgia State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program investigates specific complaints inside licensed facilities; and the Atlanta VA Health Care System handles veterans' benefits like Aid & Attendance. ARC's role is to be the front door that helps a family figure out which of those agencies they actually need, which matters most for families who don't yet know the landscape.
For a Fulton County family split between Alpharetta and Johns Creek trying to coordinate care for a parent while also working full-time, that front-door function can save real time — instead of independently discovering CCSP, GeorgiaCares, the Ombudsman Program, and DCH/HFRD's facility search through separate web searches, one ADRC call can surface all four at once, with warm handoffs where ARC has an existing relationship with the receiving agency. The tradeoff is that ARC is a starting point, not a finish line; families should expect to make at least one more call after ARC to reach the agency that actually resolves their specific issue.
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