Daphne Johnston

Founder and Director, Respite Ministry
Founder and Director, Respite for All Foundation
Montgomery, Alabama 

Daphne Johnston has put her master’s degree in gerontology to work for her community – and beyond. Her personal mission is to help families, professionals, and churches better understand how a volunteer community can provide healing for those living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, as well as their caregivers. Daphne has a wealth of clinical, administrative and teaching experiences that has led her to build a thriving Alzheimer’s ministry which has logged over 80,000 hours of volunteer time with only three employees for the past eight years.  

In 2012, Daphne developed and launched the Respite Ministry, housed at First United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, as a faith-based program that draws on simple interactive techniques and a room full of engaged volunteers to provide cognitive, social, spiritual, service and recreational activities during a four-hour day four days a week. Through this program, individuals and their family members rediscover a sense of purpose and enjoy the opportunity to participate in meaningful activities among their peers. The local Respite Ministry has been nationally recognized by the Administration on Aging and featured in Kiplinger’s Magazine Retirement Issue for alternative quality healthcare.

To replicate the success of the local program in communities across the country, Daphne founded the Respite for All Foundation in 2018 and serves as its executive director. Through the Foundation, Daphne teaches churches and congregations of any denomination how to build Respite Ministries. It is her belief that the faith-based community can provides scores of willing volunteers to offer fellowship and love to families living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia if given the chance. The Respite for All Foundation has to date inspired 18 new volunteer communities spanning from Florida to Washington and has engaged over 2000 volunteers and families living with dementia.

In 2019, Daphne was invited to present her volunteer-based model of care in Australia at the International Aging and Spirituality Conference. She is the author of Reclaiming Joy Together, which lays out the concepts of building and implementing Respite communities.