Academy Senior Living

stay in the moment

This is truly a unique place to have your loved one with cognitive decline. Their well trained staff is so attentive, emphatic and knowledgeable in the field of dementia. The facility is five star with their own personal chef that serves very healthy home cooked meals for the residents. The creative activities they provide are designed for residents with dementia. For example “ A Woodstock event where all the residents enjoyed listening to music from the 60/ 70s. They were all dressed up in groovy glasses, flower heads bands they designed and peace necklaces.” It was an event everyone in the community enjoyed. Music is in abundance and circle talk is a therapeutic way to remember the past. The Academy at Bella Vista is a five star facility and unlike any other memory care community.

Avis

The Academy had super huge refrigerators and stainless steel appliances which I thought were too much for apartment living. In assisted living, there's no way you'd need a kitchen that elaborate. It was also out of my price range. The rooms were excellent and were very large. They had very large outdoor decks. They had a library, a big exercise room, therapy room, and an indoor lap pool. Everything was just A-plus there. I loved the dining room because it had small tables which seated four in small rooms, which made it very intimate. It wasn't a huge dining hall. I could tell it would be a very quiet and tasteful place to live. The staff was all very educated, knew what they were doing, and were very clear in explaining their fees and how they charge you.

CUProf

If your loved one is completely docile, this is a lovely place. When the staff felt that our parent was becoming difficult, however, the nursing staff insisted that we hire full-time personal caregivers. When our parent became unruly, the staff was not good at controlling the situation; we felt that they over-reacted and were very quick to judge normal dementia behaviors as unruly. Based on our experience, we would suggest that prospective clients read their "Care we provide" document very carefully to learn what care and support they do and do not provide, and what requirements they place on caregiving and communication. For example, that document states that all medical communication must flow through the facility's nursing staff; in our case, that clause was invoked to forbid the medical case managers hired by the family from communicating with doctors. Also, be aware of deceptive wording; for example, most of the meals are cooked by the staff, not created by chefs at the Academy.

Caring5222

I visited the place and it's extremely nice. The Academy is a high-end community. It's pricey but it's really beautiful. The location is convenient and it's near my place. I am attracted with it's amenities and the quality of the place. It's clean and very well organized. The place is conducive for a retirement community but well, the cost would just be the factor because it's not that affordable. I like it there because you still have privacy but you also have places to meet with groups. They also have activities and events. One event that they had was that they send people to come in and to talk about books like a book signing stuff. They also had wine tasting. They just have a wide variety of activities. I never got to taste the food but the dining rooms are really nice. I would definitely recommend this place.

Anne Togher, Caregiver Coach

This is an assisted living facility that offers very high-end memory care. It's a few miles away from The Academy proper. I had a client there and oversaw a team of home care workers that the family had hired to augment care. It's nestled in a nice neighborhood. It's inconspicuous; it looks like a home blended into the neighborhood, just up a tiny, winding road. But parking is scarce. The facility itself is state of the art, with the highest end memory care in Boulder County. There are just 10 rooms, and they're all spacious, with features like radiant floor heating and automatic lights that turn on when you enter the room. There's also a huge, country-style open kitchen. The staff"”three staff to 10 residents"”is well trained, and their demeanor is calm. They're clearly able to handle the stresses of caring for residents who need a lot of individual attention. Like The Academy, it's owned by a group of investors who started it because their families had a need for the kind of care they now offer. Everything is first rate. The food and activities are excellent. And instead of offering tours to interested families, which could seem intrusive to the residents' privacy, they set up occasional social events, which are low-keys ways for everyone to interact.