CapAble
Your Home Should Support the Life You Want to Live
CapAble helps older adults remain safer, more independent, and more confident at home.
A home should be a place of comfort and connection. But as mobility, health, or daily needs change, familiar spaces can become difficult or unsafe to navigate.
CapAble is Welcome Home Angel’s aging-in-place program for older adults. Modeled after the evidence-based CAPABLE™ program developed by Johns Hopkins University, CapAble brings professional guidance and practical home improvements together around one important priority: what matters most to the individual.
Rather than providing a standard list of services, the program begins by listening. Participants identify the daily activities they want to improve, such as bathing safely, preparing meals, moving through the home, managing medications, or getting outside more easily. The CapAble team then works alongside each participant to develop realistic solutions that support those goals.
A Team Built Around the Participant
CAPABLE is a participant-directed, home-based program generally delivered through a series of visits over four to five months. The team includes:
Occupational Therapist
The occupational therapist helps the participant identify barriers affecting everyday activities and explores strategies, equipment, and home modifications that can make daily routines safer and easier.
Registered Nurse
The registered nurse works with the participant on health-related priorities that may affect independence, including pain, strength, medication management, mood, and communication with healthcare providers.
Handy Worker
The handy worker completes repairs or accessibility modifications connected to the participant’s goals and home safety needs. Improvements may include grab bars, railings, improved lighting, repaired flooring, or other targeted changes.
Social Worker or Care Partner Support Specialist
Through CapAble’s care partner enhancement, a social worker or trained care partner support specialist can provide guidance and resources to participating older adults and the family members or friends who assist them.
This team member helps care partners better understand their role, identify useful community resources, address caregiving challenges, and recognize the importance of their own health and well-being. Support may include a care partner self-assessment, an individualized action plan, resource navigation, and direct conversations with the participant and care partner.
The Participant
The participant is the most important member of the team. Goals are written in the participant’s own words, and every recommendation begins with what that person wants to accomplish.
Small Changes Can Make a Meaningful Difference
CapAble addresses both the individual and the home environment. This coordinated approach can help older adults:
- Complete daily activities with greater independence
- Reduce barriers and hazards within the home
- Build confidence around mobility and fall prevention
- Better manage pain, medications, and health priorities
- Feel more capable and in control of everyday life
- Remain connected to the home and community they value
Research on CAPABLE has demonstrated improvements in daily function, confidence related to avoiding falls, depressive symptoms, and pain. Studies have also reported reductions in healthcare utilization and costs for some participant groups.
Who May Benefit?
CapAble may be appropriate for an older adult who:
- Wants to continue living safely at home
- Has difficulty with one or more daily activities
- Has concerns about falling or navigating the home
- Experiences mobility, strength, pain, or medication challenges
- Lives in a home that no longer fully supports their needs
- Is willing to identify personal goals and try new strategies
Participation begins with a screening process to determine eligibility, program availability, and whether CapAble is the right fit.
Support for Families & Care Partners
Family members and friends often play an important role in helping an older adult remain at home. CapAble welcomes the involvement of care partners when the participant would like them included.
Care partners may receive information that helps them understand the program, support the participant’s goals, locate useful resources, and recognize their own need for support and self-care. The participant remains at the center of all decisions.
For Healthcare and Community Referral Partners
CapAble can complement the work of healthcare providers, social workers, senior-serving organizations, care managers, housing partners, and other community professionals.
Referral partners help identify older adults who may benefit from coordinated clinical support and targeted home modifications. With the participant’s permission, Welcome Home Angel can communicate with referring professionals while protecting privacy and confidentiality.
CapAble is function-focused rather than medically directed. It is designed to help older adults translate health and safety recommendations into practical changes within the place where daily life happens: the home.
For Funders, Businesses, and Community Partners
Helping an older adult remain safely at home strengthens more than one household. It can reduce caregiver strain, address preventable risks, support health equity, and lessen pressure on healthcare and long-term care systems.
Welcome Home Angel brings together healthcare insight, skilled construction, community partnerships, and a long history of creating personalized home solutions. Through CapAble, that experience is being extended to older adults as part of the organization’s ABLE Pathway.
Financial gifts, in-kind materials, professional services, and referral partnerships help make these interventions accessible to people who may otherwise fall between traditional service and funding systems.
Part of the ABLE Pathway
CapAble is one of three Welcome Home Angel programs designed to create safe, functional, and uplifting homes across the lifespan.
AdaptAble serves children and youth with significant health conditions or disabilities.
AccessAble supports adolescents and adults experiencing disability, injury, or changing accessibility needs.
CapAble extends independence, dignity, safety, and wellness at home for older adults.
Together, these programs reflect a simple belief: everyone deserves a home that works with them, not against them.
A Safer Home. Greater Confidence. More Possibility.
Whether you are seeking support for yourself or someone you love, referring an older adult, or investing in healthier communities, you can help make aging at home safer and more achievable.
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CapAble is Welcome Home Angel’s aging-in-place track and is modeled after the evidence-based CAPABLE™ program developed by Johns Hopkins University.