By Cleveland Senior Advisor Care Team · August 5, 2026
Greater Cleveland's seven counties are split between two Area Agencies on Aging and two ombudsman regions. If your parent lives in Summit or Portage County, the Cleveland phone numbers will not help you. Here is who actually covers them.
The county line that actually matters
A daughter in Shaker Heights and a daughter in Stow can be doing exactly the same research on exactly the same afternoon, and they will end up on the phone with two different agencies. Stow is roughly a half-hour drive from Solon. It is not in the same aging-services region.
Ohio divides its aging network into Planning and Service Areas, and this site's seven counties fall into two of them. Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina sit in PSA 10A, which is oriented toward Cleveland. Summit and Portage sit in PSA 10B, which is oriented toward Akron and Canton.
This is not a filing technicality. It decides which phone number gets your parent a Medicaid waiver assessment, which office can intervene when an assisted living community tries to discharge them, and which county agency takes a report of neglect. Families in Stow, Hudson, Twinsburg and Macedonia (Summit County) and in Aurora, Kent and Ravenna (Portage County) call the Cleveland numbers first almost every time, because Cleveland is where they work and often where the hospital is.
The wrong agency will usually redirect you. What it costs you is days. During a hospital discharge, days are the whole game.
Two Area Agencies on Aging, one metro area
The Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging is PSA 10A. It covers Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina counties, and it handles benefits counseling, care coordination, congregate and home-delivered meal funding, caregiver support and long-term care options counseling for those five counties. It does not cover Summit or Portage.
Summit and Portage are served by Direction Home Akron Canton Area Agency on Aging and Disabilities, PSA 10B, at 1949 Town Park Boulevard in Uniontown. The agency publishes a toll-free line of 800-421-7277 and a direct line of 330-896-9172, with office hours Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. General intake questions go to screening@dhad.org. Direction Home also covers Stark and Wayne counties, which is why its materials read as Akron-Canton rather than Cleveland.
The reason this matters more than an address on a brochure: Ohio delivers PASSPORT and the Assisted Living Waiver through PASSPORT Administrative Agencies, and in this region those are the Area Agencies on Aging. So the assessment that establishes whether your parent meets Nursing Facility Level of Care runs through Direction Home for a Stow or Kent resident, not through the Cleveland agency. Confirm the current assignment when you call, since administrative agency designations do change.
There is a specific trap here worth naming. A family whose parent moved from Solon to Aurora, or from Twinsburg to Beachwood, will often keep calling whichever agency they used the first time. County of residence is what governs, not where the family lives or where the doctor is.
The ombudsman split, and why it matters most
Ohio's Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program is free, confidential, and acts only with the consent of the resident or their representative. Ombudsmen investigate complaints about care quality, residents' rights, improper transfer or discharge, restraint use, and abuse or neglect in nursing homes and residential care facilities. For most families this is the single most useful phone number on the list, and it is the one most often dialed wrong.
Region 10A is operated by the Long-Term Care Ombudsman of Cleveland at 8111 Rockside Road, Suite 250, in Valley View, reachable at 1-800-365-3112. It covers Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain and Medina.
Region 10B is housed inside Direction Home at 1949 Town Park Boulevard, Uniontown, and uses the same toll-free number as the agency, 800-421-7277. It covers Portage, Stark, Summit and Wayne. If your parent lives in a community in Stow or Aurora, this is your ombudsman. The Cleveland office cannot take the case.
Where this becomes urgent: if a community issues a thirty-day discharge notice, the response clock starts immediately, and one of the two hearing deadlines is only ten days. Spending three of those days being transferred between ombudsman offices is a real and avoidable loss. Our ombudsman and complaints guide walks through what the office can and cannot do once you reach the right one.
Adult Protective Services changes number three times across this region
Ohio has no single statewide adult protective services hotline. APS is supervised by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services but administered county by county, so the number you dial depends entirely on where your parent physically lives.
In Cuyahoga County, reports go to the Division of Senior and Adult Services at 216-420-6700, a 24-hour line for abuse, neglect, self-neglect and financial exploitation of adults 60 and older.
In Summit County, adult protective services is run by the county Department of Job and Family Services out of the Russell M. Pry Building at 1180 South Main Street in Akron. The department's main published line is 844-640-6446.
In Portage County, Child and Adult Protective Services operates from 449 South Meridian Street in Ravenna. The county publishes a 24-hour reporting hotline at (330) 296-CARE, or (330) 296-2273, and a business line at (330) 297-3690.
If you cannot identify the right county contact quickly, the statewide backup is 855-644-6277 or the online portal at aps.jfs.ohio.gov, though a direct county call is faster for an active safety concern. Call 911 if someone is in immediate danger. And if what you are reporting happened inside a licensed nursing home or assisted living community, report it to the Ohio Department of Health complaint line at 1-800-342-0553 as well. That number is statewide and does not change at any county line.
What does not change when you cross into Summit or Portage
Licensing is identical. Ohio issues one Residential Care Facility license under Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 3701-16, and it applies the same way in Kent as it does in Lakewood. The 120-day cap on skilled nursing care inside an RCF, and the admission and retention limits in OAC 3701-16-07(C), are statewide rules. Our RCF licensing explainer covers what that single license does and does not tell you.
Memory care is the same story. Ohio has no separate memory care license or certification. A community operating a special care unit owes families a written disclosure under OAC 3701-16-07(F)(5) covering admission and discharge criteria, staffing, staff dementia training, programming, extra costs and the physical design of the unit. Do not expect a Summit County community to hold a credential a Cuyahoga County one lacks. Neither of them can.
Medicaid financial eligibility rules are set at the state level too. Income and resource limits, the community spouse resource allowance and estate recovery all work the same way regardless of which county processes the application.
MyCare Ohio's Northeast Ohio region does cover all seven counties, Summit and Portage included. One caveat worth respecting: Ohio has been restructuring the program under Next Generation MyCare, with a first phase of counties transitioning effective January 1, 2026. Confirm current plan and county status directly with the Ohio Department of Medicaid rather than trusting any summary, including this one.
The everyday services that do change
Home-delivered meals run on different networks. Benjamin Rose Meals on Wheels serves Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, free for participants 60 and older. Summit and Portage are served instead by Meals on Wheels of Northeast Ohio, run by VANTAGE Aging, which also covers Stark, Wayne, Carroll, Holmes and Tuscarawas counties, has no formal eligibility requirements, and offers meals on a sliding fee scale.
Transportation stops at the Cuyahoga line. Greater Cleveland RTA's discounted senior fare and its ADA paratransit service cover Cuyahoga County. A family in Stow or Kent cannot book RTA paratransit to bring a parent to a Cleveland appointment. Check your own county's transit authority and ask Direction Home what transportation options exist under PASSPORT or its other programs.
Even 2-1-1 is not one system. Ohio's 211 network is a patchwork of locally operated providers rather than a single statewide service. United Way 211 coverage is confirmed for Cuyahoga and Geauga; Summit County runs its own 211 helpline separately. Dialing 2-1-1 is still worth trying anywhere, but confirm local coverage rather than assuming it.
None of these gaps are hard to work around once you know they exist. Nearly all of the wasted time we see comes from families assuming the region works as one unit because the hospital system does.
What the market actually looks like in Stow, Aurora and Kent
Supply here is real but thinner than in Cuyahoga's inner suburbs, which changes the search. In Stow, VITALIA Stow at 4291 Allen Road and Brookdale Stow at 5511 Fishcreek Road both offer assisted living and memory care within a few minutes of each other, which gives a family an unusually direct side-by-side comparison of a national operator against a regional one.
In Aurora, Anna Maria of Aurora at 889 North Aurora Road offers assisted living, memory care and skilled nursing on a 70-acre wooded campus shared with The Kensington at Anna Maria, its independent living companion. Its skilled nursing program was named Ohio's number one nursing home on Newsweek's 2025 Best Nursing Homes list, and the community has been family-owned across three generations for more than 60 years.
In Kent, Altercare Post-Acute Rehabilitation Center at 1463 Tallmadge Road publishes a specific clinical focus on orthopedic, cardiovascular and stroke rehabilitation rather than general long-term skilled nursing, which makes it a different kind of option than a general nursing facility after a hospital stay.
Here is what we cannot tell you, and nobody honestly can: what any of this costs in Summit or Portage County specifically. CareScout publishes Ohio statewide medians only, $6,103 a month for assisted living and $9,186 for a semi-private nursing home room, and no organization publishes a county-level figure for this region. There is no published memory care median for Ohio at all, because CareScout does not survey memory care as a category. Any memory care price you find quoted online is somebody's estimate. Ask each community for a written all-in monthly quote and compare those. Our costs section lays out the full Ohio table with its caveats.
What to do this week
Confirm the county first, in writing if you can. Municipal boundaries in this part of Ohio cross county lines in places, and a mailing address is not always a reliable guide. Your parent's county of residence determines every agency on this page.
Then make one call, not five. If the answer is Summit or Portage, call Direction Home at 800-421-7277 and say plainly what you need: a waiver assessment, options counseling, or an ombudsman. The same number reaches both the agency and the Region 10B ombudsman program.
Write down the county APS number now, before you need it. In a crisis nobody looks up a phone number calmly, and the Cuyahoga number will not help a family in Ravenna.
If you want a second read on which communities in Summit or Portage County are worth touring, or you are not certain which county actually governs your parent's situation, we do this for Northeast Ohio families every day at no cost. Our full facility directory is free to browse either way.
