When you begin looking for an assisted living home for your loved one, some of the cheapest ones can be the thing of nightmares. Just as much as you need to know what to look for in a quality assisted living facility, you also need to know the signs of a less than reputable one. Here are some of those signs.
Unhappy Residents
One way to judge an assisted living home is to take a look at the residents. Are they happy or do they seem bored and despondent? Are they involved in activities? Is the staff interacting with them? If the home you are looking at is full of sad and depressed residents, keep searching.
Dirty Facilities
You wouldn’t want to live in a home that smells like bodily fluids and looks just as bad. A less than reputable facility puts minimum effort into keeping their facilities clean so you know they aren’t going to give your loved ones the best care. Give dirty facilities a hard pass.
Unappetizing Food
A good rule of thumb to use when searching for nursing homes is if you wouldn’t be happy there, your parents probably wouldn’t be either. Case in point, if you go to the cafeteria and there is nothing there that you would want to eat, remember this is the food they will be feeding your parents three times a day.
Less than reputable facilities will usually be dinged with health code violations or outdated licenses. Make sure to check questionable facilities with the BBB. The last thing you want is for the assisted living facility you chose for your parents to give them food poisoning or worse.
Unprofessional Staff
If your loved one is experiencing an emergency, if they need to be bathed, when they need food, they will depend on your assisted living home staff to take care of them. Take note of the professionalism of the staff at the nursing homes you tour.
A less than reputable nursing home will have an unprofessional staff that is unfriendly and inattentive to the residents. Never settle for a place with a lazy, unprofessional staff – your parents’ lives depend on it.
Bad Maintenance
If the doors are broken, the windows don’t close, or the alarm system is always on the fritz how can you expect their emergency medical equipment to be reliable? Bad building maintenance is a sign of a less than reputable nursing home and is a huge red flag warning you about the level of care you can expect from a place like that.
Unkempt Grounds
When you drove up to the facility did you think what a pleasant place it was or were you afraid to go in? Unkempt grounds are a clear sign of an assisted living home that is doing the bare minimum and is not really interested in the quality of life of their residents.
See What a Reputable Assisted Living Facility Looks Like
You can avoid the horror stories by making one trip to see what a reputable assisted facility looks like. At Unlimited Care Cottages we have put a lot of thought, care, and planning into creating the type of facility that anyone would be happy to live in.
Call us today or fill out our online contact form to schedule a visit of one of our personal care cottages.
