California's regional resource centers: a program serving families and caregivers of brain-impaired adults.

Significant progress is being made in California to establish statewide and regionally based services for brain-impaired adults, their families and caregivers. However, there continues to be a large and growing need to provide families and professionals with accurate, timely, and centralized information about brain impairment and the availability of services to meet their needs. For caregivers of brain-impaired adults, affordable respite care is the most desired, but least available service in all regions of California. Funding allocations limit the number of families who receive respite care from RRCs. The demand for respite is great. By the end of 1987, 357 families were on waiting lists to receive respite care from one of the seven RRCs in operation. Data collected on 485 families showed that less than one out of two family clients were able to receive respite services because of limited RRCs resources.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)