Acacia’s History

The idea of adult day care blossomed after in 1976, a minister from the United Methodist Church visited an adult day care center in Hawaii. He brought the idea to an organized church group that was looking for alternatives to address the growing needs of seniors in their community.

The group proposed a plan to the City of Garden Grove, which decided to write a grant proposal to the Office on Aging, hire staff, and organize an Adult Day Care program under the auspices of the city of Garden Grove. In 1979, the Garden Grove Adult Day Care Center opened its doors in the classrooms of the church with an initial 8 participants in attendance. The center was licensed to serve 40 participants per day.

In 1984, the administration of the program transitioned from the city of Garden Grove to the center's non-profit Board of Directors.

In 1993, the Board of Directors added a new program: Adult Day Health Care. With this new program a health care team, including a registered nurse, nurse's aides, and therapists, was added to the staff so that the center could address the progressing needs of frail older adults.

Demand for the program was ever increasing. Waiting lists to gain access to services drove the Board of Directors and staff to push for expansion. In 1997, The Garden Grove Adult Day Care Center moved to its current location at 11391 Acacia Parkway, increased its service capacity to 60 participants per day and changed its name to Acacia Adult Day Services.

Within one year the program was again approaching maximum capacity. Thanks to the generosity of a concerned community, the efforts of volunteers, the Board of Directors, and staff, Acacia was able to raise enough funds to again expand the program. In September 2001, Acacia opened the second phase of expansion within the facility, increasing the licensed service capacity to 120 participants per day.

Acacia-Central's current enrollment is at approximately 211 participants, with our highest attendance day at 97. Our clients are mostly low-income seniors, 62% are Asian, 24% Caucasian, 11% Hispanic, and 3% African-American (88% are Medi-Cal recipients).

In 1996 Acacia began working with a group of citizens in Cypress who were concerned about the need to provide accessible non-profit adult day services to seniors in their community. In 2000 the group joined Acacia as the Acacia-Northwest Site Advisory Committee with the mission of planning and fundraising for the new center in Cypress. Thanks to the efforts of many volunteers and staff, Acacia-Northwest opened on June 14th, 2004 and served participants from Cypress and surrounding communities for more than 3 years. Due to irreconcilable funding and regulatory hurdles Acacia-Northwest was merged into the Acacia-Central facility in October 2007 where all participants are now being served.

Our service area includes but is not limited to the cities of Garden Grove, Cypress, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Stanton, Rossmoor, Anaheim, Westminster, Midway City, east Long Beach and surrounding communities.

For more information please contact Mallory Vega at mvega@acacia-services.org or call 714-530-1566.