Are they taking new clients right now?

This is the only question that matters and it is the one almost nobody asks directly. A family calls, describes a whole situation, and finds out twenty minutes in that the program has been full since March.

Ask it first, not last

The instinct is to explain the situation before asking whether help is available, because explaining feels like the polite order and because the situation is the thing on your mind. It is the wrong order. Twenty minutes of describing a parent's decline to somebody who was always going to say no is exhausting in a way that makes the next call less likely to happen.

Lead with it. "Before I explain anything: are you taking new clients this month, and is there a wait?" Nobody is offended. Intake staff prefer it, because their day is also finite.

Why the website answer is usually wrong

Not because anyone is lying. A small nonprofit's site is maintained by whoever has time, and capacity moves weekly while a website moves yearly. Three specific gaps produce most of the wrong answers:

The page says what the program does, not whether it is running. A service description is permanent. Availability is not.
A grant ended. Programs are frequently funded in cycles, and when a cycle closes the service pauses while the page stays up.
The one person who did it left. In an organisation of four, a single departure closes a service, and there is nobody whose job it is to update the site about that.

None of this makes the organisation unreliable. It makes the website a poor source for this particular question. See why directories go stale.

The four questions that get a real answer

Asked in this order, on the phone, in under two minutes:

Are you taking new clients? Open, waitlist, or closed. Get one of those three words.
Do you serve my county? Service area cuts more families out than eligibility does, and it is the fastest thing to check.
If there is a wait, roughly how long, and does anything move faster? Many programs have a priority route for specific circumstances and will not mention it unless asked.
If not you, who? Intake staff carry a mental map of what is actually open locally that no directory has. This single question is frequently worth more than the call's original purpose.

What "closed" usually means

Rarely permanent. Usually: full for now, funded again in the next cycle, or open to a narrower group this quarter. Ask when to call back and write the date down. A program that is closed in October and open in January is not a dead end, it is a diary entry, and families who treat it as a rejection never call again.

What we cannot tell you

Whether a specific organisation is taking clients today. We record what we checked and when we checked it, and an organisation can fill the week after we looked. Our dated answer is a much better starting point than an undated directory and it is not a guarantee, which is why every result carries the date it was verified rather than presenting itself as current.