By Indy Senior Advisor Care Team · August 21, 2026
CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions is the single Area Agency on Aging for Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Boone and Hancock counties. Here is what its Resource Center, CareAware, Meals & More, Way2Go and Flourish programs actually do, and when each one applies.
The one number worth saving before you need it
Most families in the Indianapolis metro don't find CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions until they're already mid-crisis -- a discharge planner mentions it, or a neighbor says "call CICOA" without explaining what that means. It's worth understanding before that call, not during it.
CICOA is Indiana's Planning & Service Area 8, the state-designated Area Agency on Aging covering Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Boone and Hancock counties, plus Morgan and Shelby further out. That's an unusually large single service area -- Carmel and Fishers families use the exact same agency as downtown Indianapolis families, and Greenfield in Hancock County calls the same number as Plainfield in Hendricks County.
The entry point is the Aging & Disability Resource Center: 317-254-5465 (main line) or 317-803-6131 (Resource Center direct), with a toll-free option at 800-432-2422. It's a real intake line staffed by people who ask what's actually going on and route from there -- not a recording that dumps you into a menu.
What happens on that first call
A Resource Center call is an intake conversation, not a program enrollment. Staff ask about the situation -- living alone, recent fall, medication confusion, a spouse who's worn out -- and match it against CICOA's own programs plus other community resources it doesn't run directly, like legal aid or utility assistance.
For families who are still early in figuring out what they even need, this matters more than it sounds like it should. A lot of the calls we hear about start with something vague like "my mom isn't doing great" and end with a specific referral to a home safety assessment or a caregiver support group, because the intake staff know which of CICOA's own programs fits a given situation and which ones don't.
It's also the front door for figuring out whether staying home is still realistic -- CICOA doesn't push families toward a facility or toward staying home; the Resource Center's job is information and referral, not sales.
CareAware: support for the caregiver, not just the care recipient
CICOA's CareAware program is built around the person doing the caregiving, which is a different focus than most of what families encounter. It offers one-on-one coaching -- not a support group alone, though it connects to those too -- for people caring for an aging parent, a spouse, or an adult child with a disability.
What that coaching actually covers: help managing the caregiver's own stress and health, planning for what happens if the caregiver becomes unable to keep going, navigating the transition points between levels of care (independent living to assisted living, assisted living to memory care, home to a nursing facility), and connecting to respite options so the caregiver gets actual breaks rather than running on empty indefinitely.
This is worth calling about earlier than most families do. The instinct is to wait until burnout is already severe, but CareAware's coaching is more useful as a planning tool than as crisis intervention -- if you can see a harder stretch coming (a diagnosis progressing, a caregiver's own health declining), that's the right time to call, not six months after.
Meals & More: the state's largest senior meal program, and more than food
Meals & More is CICOA's nutrition program, and by scale it's Indiana's largest senior meal provider -- CICOA reports delivering over 430,000 meals a year across home-delivered routes and neighborhood meal sites combined.
The home-delivered route matters for reasons beyond nutrition. A driver showing up at the same time most days is also a low-key wellness check -- someone who notices if a door isn't answered, or if something seems off, and says something. For an out-of-state adult child trying to build a long-distance care plan that survives a week they can't fly in, a reliable meal delivery contact is one of the more practical local eyes a family can recruit without hiring anyone.
Neighborhood meal sites serve the opposite need -- getting someone out of an isolated home and around other people on a regular schedule, which matters as much for mental health as the meal itself does.
Way2Go and Home Safety & Accessibility: the practical logistics layer
Way2Go is CICOA's transportation coordination -- rides to medical appointments, grocery trips, and social engagements for people who no longer drive or shouldn't be driving. Transportation is a quieter crisis point than most families expect: it's often the thing that actually forces a move, not physical care needs, because a parent who can't get to dialysis or a cardiology follow-up reliably has a problem that in-home care alone doesn't solve.
Home Safety & Accessibility covers physical modifications -- grab bars, ramps, and similar changes aimed specifically at fall prevention. Given that a first fall is one of the strongest predictors of a second one, this is a program worth asking about proactively after any fall, not just after a second or third one makes the pattern undeniable.
Neither program requires exhausting every other option first -- both are meant to be called about directly when the specific need comes up, separate from the broader intake conversation.
Flourish Care Management and the PathWays connection
Flourish is CICOA's longer-term care coordination service -- ongoing case management rather than a single referral, for situations that need someone tracking multiple moving pieces over time: medical appointments, in-home services, family communication, and adjustments as needs change.
CICOA also locally administers case management for Indiana's PathWays Waiver, the Medicaid HCBS program for Hoosiers 60 and older that can pay for in-home care services or care inside a Residential Care Facility holding a PathWays provider agreement. That waiver case management is a distinct function from Flourish's private-pay care coordination, though both run through the same organization -- worth clarifying which one applies to your family's situation when you call, since the funding and eligibility rules differ.
What CICOA doesn't do, and where the boundary sits
CICOA is a coordination and direct-service agency, not a regulator and not a facility operator. It doesn't license Residential Care Facilities (that's the Indiana Department of Health), it doesn't investigate abuse or neglect allegations in licensed facilities (that's the Long-Term Care Ombudsman, reachable through CICOA's Resource Center but functionally separate), and it doesn't own or run the assisted living or memory care communities families ultimately choose.
It also isn't a substitute for Adult Protective Services in an active safety emergency -- that's a different number entirely. The Resource Center is the right first call for planning, coordination, and connecting to programs; it's not the right first call if someone is in immediate danger right now.
One call, not six
The practical value of CICOA's Resource Center is that it collapses what would otherwise be six separate phone calls -- to a nutrition program, a transportation service, a caregiver support line, a home modification contractor, a waiver case manager, and a general information line -- into one intake conversation that routes to the right program.
For a family anywhere in Marion, Hamilton, Hendricks, Johnson, Boone or Hancock County who isn't sure yet whether the right next step is home modifications, a meals program, waiver paperwork, or something else entirely, that single call is the most efficient way to find out. Save both numbers -- 317-254-5465 and 317-803-6131 -- before the day you actually need them.
