Benedictine Living Community-Regina

Benedictine Living Community-Regina is a really good place. My mother is doing very well there, and my dad is happy with it. She's in the memory care section at the moment. She barely qualified for the memory care part of it, but they had an opening and they suggested strongly because of her physical requirements that she take the memory care portion and hopefully move into the assisted living portion of it. They worked well with us, from our perspective, to get her out of the nursing home and into memory care/assisted living type situation. The nursing home would have been horrible for her. She's been there about a month and a half, and so far it's been mostly very positive. The staff members are incredibly caring for her. They know her already. They're knowing her little quirks, which she has a lot of. They also are very caring for my dad who stops in to visit every day. He's one of the few spouses who are there every day, and he's there many, many hours every day, too, so they're getting to know him quite well. We have had great interaction with the management to the point where several times my dad has been walking down the hallway to my mom's room, and the manager has said, "Come on in here. We need to talk for a minute." It was just about something that they maybe talked about three or four days earlier to see if he's had satisfaction with it. There were some complaints about the food. My father mentioned to the manager that it was cold. She asked, "Is it getting better?" She talked about the kitchen staff and the dietitians and dad said, "It seems to be getting better. It's not as cold." She said, "I need to know. Any problems you have with anything at any level, please stop in here and talk to me about it." They're very, very good. It's very clean. They have a lot for the people to do if they want to do it. If they don't, they don't intrude on your privacy at all. They have places to eat that are not the dining room. When my wife and I want to bring something for mom and dad to eat, we have access to several areas to eat, and one of them we call the fish room. They've got this huge fish tank and we spent a lot of time in there. My mom has settled in quite nicely. The food comes from the hospital portion, which is about half a mile away, and it's wheeled down to the living area, so it has often been not as warm as they'd like. I think there are some areas of improvement on that. She's been getting plenty of portions. The amount of food is good, just sometimes it's cold. The building itself is very nice, but they have a tight parking lot. It's kind of hard to get in off of that street. The parking area is very constricted. They say they have some plans for that, but because of where they're located, I'm not sure where they could go with the parking area because they're landlocked. Between the building and the street is the parking area. There's not a lot of room for improvement there. It is quite tight especially when it's winter and the snow gets in the way. Other than that, it seems to be kept very well. We've only seen it in the wintertime. She has some bushes outside her window, and they've already seen some Cardinals in her bushes outside the window. They're thinking of asking about a bird feeder outside her window, which my dad is looking forward to. There are lots of activities. There are many things to do there if they want to participate. My mom has taken up on a couple of things. She has made some friends there already. The activity director seems very nice and involved without being pushy. Like all these places are, they're pricy.