"My dad has moved into a place called The Birches at Harleysville. They're great. The staff is fantastic. They are very caring. They work together as a team, and everybody gets involved. They all help each other out from the top, all the way down. So, I'm very happy with this facility. The room is very nice and clean. There's enough room, but not too much. If my dad wasn't in memory care, we would have gotten their top-of-the-line one-bedroom apartment, and they all look nice. They run a gamut of shared studios, to regular studios, to deluxe, and one-bedroom apartments.
Unfortunately, they still have Covid restrictions, which is a company policy. I brought this up to the director yesterday. The only time you can go and see anybody, you have to be in their room. That is my biggest gripe with them at this point, and I brought that up yesterday. They're not allowed to intermingle. While my dad is eating or while he's doing an activity or while he's watching a game on the big screen, that I think is stupid in my opinion, and it's a corporate decision, but that is my biggest thing. That's the only reason that I don't care for the place. Other than that, I like them, but that policy, none of the other assisted living facilities in the area do it. We put them in there knowing that we go to see them all the time, but then the only time we can see them in a room, it's like if we go there and they're doing an activity, we're either wasting our time or they've got to be pulled out of the activity to spend time in a room, which the whole idea is to get them intermingling with people in that kind of stuff. So, that's my biggest complaint, and it is a big thing. Other than that, the staff is great, the facility is great, but the policy on visitation is unacceptable in my opinion. They have a lot of different activities in between assisted living and memory care. And if the person is capable, they'll bring them to the other ones in the assisted living area, which is a big plus. All those things are big pluses. My big thing that leaves a sour taste in my mouth is not being able to visit my dad while he's eating or doing an activity, so we're stuck in this room. I'm going to knock a star off because of the policy of visitation. If they didn't have that policy in effect, they'd be 5 stars in my book, but they're not because they have a stupid, outdated, antiquated policy. Value for money is very good.
I would have put my dad in their most expensive one-bedroom apartment, I would have paid for a second level of care, and I would have been happy with that. But as of now, he's in memory care with the first level of care. It's acceptable. It wouldn't have been my choice, but the more I look at it, he does need memory care at this point.
The maintenance was very good. They're on top of everything. They hung all the pictures that we wanted on the wall and mounted the TV on the wall for us. They were above and beyond. Also, they'll have people come in and play the piano, and people can sing around it, they had a banjo player, and they have movie afternoons. They also have an area where they can play cards. They can play checkers, chess, do puzzles, read, do games, and that kind of stuff, which is, I think, fantastic. On one floor, they have a pool table, and they have a built-in aviary that has a bunch of birds, it's really neat, but we're not allowed to go to any of those areas with them. So that drives me nuts. They have this beautiful facility that I could go and play games with them, sit at a card table and play, but I can't do it because of their COVID shutdown on nobody being able to be in public areas, that we're only allowed to be in his room. Why do you pay all that money when the only place you can go and see them is in a 15 x 5 room?"
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