Selecting a nursing home for a parent is often a sensitive topic. There are lots of considerations to be made, and this is something that you must align with both your parent as well as yourself. After all, an assisted care facility is just that – it provides assistance. It’s still up to you to do your job as a child and support your parents emotionally, morally, and in other ways that the facility can’t provide. That said, choosing the right assisted care home is a crucial first step to ensuring the wellbeing of those you love.
Check if Relatives and Close Friends Have Prior Experience with the Place
If you have any relatives or close friends who’ve already used the same home you’re considering, that’s a great start. You should get in touch with them and sit down for a longer talk about how they feel regarding the place. This is not going to be a short conversation, even if things are generally good. You’ll want to get the full story in as many details as possible in order to fully understand the implications of living in the facility. Talk to the people who live there themselves, if possible – see how they like it and what their main complaints are. This applies to any place. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at a home like Spring Meadows, Trumbull CT, which has an established reputation in the community, or an alternative option – you have to get opinions.
Ask as Much as You Can
A common mistake when taking a tour around a nursing home is to feel like you’re intruding on the working time of the employees, which can lead to avoiding any serious questions. This is wrong – part of their job is to reassure potential applicants about the quality of their service. Ask as much as you can, and don’t be afraid to reach for harder questions either. Take notes of the answers you get, and try to cross-reference those with other employees to see if the overall story is consistent.
Visit Out of the Regular Hours
A good trick that can solidify your impressions, positive or negative, is to make an unscheduled surprise visit outside of the regular visiting hours. Some nursing homes go out of their way to make special preparations when they know they have a visitor coming, so you may get a drastically different picture if you visit without warning. On the other hand, if everything looks exactly like it did during your regular visit, this is definitely a good sign. Just make sure that you don’t get too pushy about being allowed to examine the premises. After all, visiting outside of regular hours is a different story than what we described in the previous section.
Take as long as you need to make your decision. This is not something you should decide on lightly. Many factors can come into play here, and it’s important to see as much of the big picture as you can. It’s going to take a while to identify the ideal place for your needs, but it will be well worth it when you see the happiness in those you care about, and when they’re given the care they need and deserve.
