Silverado The Huntington

My friend moved into Silverado The Huntington. The place is very clean, elegant, and they're very attentive. It seemed quite calm and the rooms are nice. I was quite impressed that's why we chose this place. The place isn't formal, but it's nice, like a well-decorated home. It's not pretentious, just a lovely community. I interacted with a couple of the residents and they appeared to be well cared for. They were appropriately dressed, groomed, and seemed very relaxed and happy. My friend says the food is wonderful. It's just very expensive.

This facility was superb when it was a small 25-30 bed facility. I was very happy with it, and residents felt like they were living in a large home, including my loved one. It doubled in size almost two years ago, and the management has struggled since to provide the same safe , enjoyable and gold-standard environment for the residents. The rooms and common areas are still kept clean, and are well-lit. The management prefers to keep residents together in the large common rooms which requires fewer staff to supervise. Unfortunately, more couches were not added with the expansion, and there are not enough for the new population. Most residents need to sit at tables. Mobile residents tend to come and go, but residents in wheelchairs are stuck, The Caregivers are excellent - loving and attentive in the time they have to devote to the residents they care for -- but there are not enough of them for the population they care for. Although things appear to be improving, there are still times when each caregiver is responsible for up to 11 residents. The rest of the time, it is 7 residents during the day and 8 - 9 residents in the evening. There is a skeleton staff overnight. The residents have always been a mixture of early stage to end-stage, but since the expansion, there population has shifted towards later stage dementia. some who need multiple caregivers at a time to care for them . This impacts the limited time caregivers have for their residents. There have been a number of accidents due to the lack of supervision. There are few systems in place to ensure efficient communication beyond shift to next shift. The food is generally good, but there is no choice of entree. However, if you do not like the entree, you can request a sandwich or salad. The meals seem heavy on the carbs and "comfort food" - this is more common that mediteranean diet. However, the cook does make an excellent effort to provide a substitute for known dislikes. - e.g. certain vegetables or pork or fish. Juice is the "sugar-water" style from concentrate. Hydration during activities has improved but is still not consistent. When I have visited, there are frequently no glasses by water dispensers. I need to give credit to the caregivers and charge nurses for trying their best to create organization out of the chaos that has ensued since the expansion, It has been sad to see this facility change from the golden standard it once was, especially as the cost keeps going up.

My mother is currently in Silverado The Huntington. I had Silverado at Home Care for my mother and found out that they had a community here in Alhambra. I didn't take her there immediately because I thought that the people there were too advanced into dementia for my mother. It looked to me more like a convalescent home, but they acquired a property next door and were going to be separating the more advanced people from the first-stage dementia people so that they could care for them in different ways. That took over a year, and they finally opened it up in December, so I took my mother there in February. She's only been there three months. In the three months that she has been there, I realized that it's something that I can't afford. It's way too expensive for what they have to offer my mother. I feel like I don't get as much as what they're asking in price there. She's in a new room, which is big, very nice and very clean with a very nice bathroom. They keep the place very clean. They provide her meals and have some activities, but I don't consider them to be activities that are as valuable as they should be for the price that I pay. They mean well and do provide a safe place for people, but I still question the amount that they charge. The weekend people are different from the weekly people. During the week, I feel like they're better cared for than on the weekend. They need more staff. I've only been there for a couple of activities and did not see anything that they promised. They promised some sort of special program to help with memory care, and they claim it's being used, but I haven't seen anything to show me that that's going on. They have some aggressive people, and I was once very alarmed in the dining room during a meal with one person yelling out loud and cussing and things that happen to people with dementia as they're in advanced stage and have no control over it. These people should be in another dining room and not put in with the first-stage dementia people who can carry on conversations still. I was very unhappy with all of the money I was paying to see this going on.

The people who were there seemed comfortable. The rooms were all very nice and furnished mostly with the occupants' furniture so they have a sense of being at home, at least to some degree. They were very nice rooms, clean and neat, a reasonable size -- very comfortable for one person. They have all the typical activities that you see in terms of music and art, bingo, games and various types. We weren't there long enough to observe a lot of those things, but they all have those things. They have nice dining rooms and very nice, attentive people. The people who worked there seemed to be very in-tune with their patients, and they seemed to be very involved with them. It looked like they had a lot of good controls on the security so people couldn't wander off, and it looked like they were able to keep track of everybody pretty closely; it looked very good, very fine. The Silverado would be an excellent place for my wife.