For social workers · August 26, 2026
A Discharge Planner's Guide to Michigan AFC Licensing Categories
Adult foster care is not one thing. The licence category sets the size of the home, and the licence certificate names the populations it may serve. Reading both before you refer saves a rejected referral.
A referral gets declined for one of two reasons: no bed, or the home is not licensed for this person. The second one is avoidable, and it is avoidable in about ninety seconds if you know what to look at.
The Size Categories
Michigan licenses adult foster care by the number of residents a home may serve. The category tells you a great deal about staffing, atmosphere, and what kind of resident tends to do well there.
| Category | Residents | What it usually means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Family Home | 1–6, owner-occupied | The licensee lives in the home. Quietest option, most family-like, staffing is the household itself. Often the best fit for someone who is overwhelmed by noise and movement. |
| Small Group Home | 1–6 | Same size, staff rather than a resident owner. Shift-based coverage. |
| Medium Group Home | 7–12 | Big enough for a staffing rota and some activity programming, small enough that everyone knows the resident. |
| Large Group Home | 13–20 | More structure, more staff on shift, more likely to have a formal activities schedule. |
| Home for the Aged | 21+ | Licensed separately from adult foster care, serving older adults. Larger, more institutional in feel, usually with more on-site services. |
Size is not quality, and bigger is not safer. A twelve-bed home with an owner who has run it for fifteen years frequently outperforms a new twenty-bed one. But size does predict fit: a person with sundowning behaviours who paces at night is a different proposition in a six-bed house than in a twenty-bed one, in both directions.
The Part Most Referrals Get Wrong: Population Designations
The licence certificate does not only state a size. It states which populations the home is licensed to serve — categories covering, for example, aged residents, people with developmental disabilities, people with mental illness, people with physical disabilities, and people with traumatic brain injury.
A home licensed for aged residents only cannot accept a fifty-year-old with a traumatic brain injury, however willing the administrator sounds on the phone and however open the bed is. If they take the referral anyway, you have created a licensing problem for them and a failed placement for your client.
Ask for the licence certificate, or check the state licensing record, before you send a packet. The single question that saves the most time is: "What populations is your licence designated for?"
What the Licence Does Not Tell You
- Whether they take your client's payer. Licence category and payer acceptance are unrelated. Ask separately about Medicaid, MI Choice waiver residents, private pay, and what the room-and-board charge is for a waiver resident.
- Whether they can manage the actual care. Two-person transfers, Hoyer lifts, insulin, oxygen, dialysis transport, wound care and behavioural needs are all capability questions, not licence questions.
- Whether they have a bed today. This is the one nobody can answer from a directory, which is the reason this platform exists.
- Whether staff have specific training. Dementia training, for instance, is a home-by-home answer.
Before You Send the Packet
- Confirm the licence category and population designation match the client.
- Confirm the payer, and get the room-and-board figure in writing if a waiver is involved.
- Describe the hardest part of the client's care first, not last. A home that says no on the phone has saved you three days.
- Ask who signs off on admissions, and get that person's direct number.
- Ask when the bed would actually be ready, not whether one exists. "We have a bed" and "we can admit Thursday" are different sentences.
None of this replaces knowing the homes in your county personally. It just means the first call is the right call more often.