The Fountains of West County

We visited a place called The Fountains (The Fountains of West County). The location is great. Everything about it is OK, but the 850-square foot room does not meet some of the criteria. For instance, we use a king-sized bed, and they can’t fit a king-sized bed in their master bedroom. The Fountains had a very good feel to it. The staff seemed to be very helpful. The food was very good. The service in the dining room, the people there were very nice and very friendly. In The Fountains, you didn’t get the feel that the residents were so infirmed that they were having problems. It was more leaning towards an assisted care. They have recently done some remodeling. I had not been there prior to the remodeling, but it has an interior like it is built on a square, so the rooms go around in a square. The interior rooms are all on the courtyard, and they have small balconies on that courtyard. The exterior rooms face other things. It was all great except the units are not large enough. The other issue for me would be the fact that there was no continuum of care. The positive is that there is no money upfront, so that’s very, very appealing.

The Fountains was very nice, but they were on a busy street. The elevator opened to the floor for memory care to where mom was going to go, there was a room for conversation. There were three large sofas with residents sitting there who were all almost incoherent and not interacting with one another. I was greeted by the feeling an institution by the way the residents were behaving. They were the most expensive, yet the residents were kind of zoned out and the rooms were older.

The Fountains was a beautiful facility and the people were very nice. But I’ve decided for the private care I want my mother to have, you’re not going to find it unless you pay massive amounts of money. Everything was nice, but a big deal for us was we didn't want a place where caregivers had to serve in the dining room. Caregivers were there to care, not to be waiters and waitresses and everything else that they made them do, which happens there. The dining area looked very nice.

I was very comfortable when I visited The Fountains. The people are very caring and they have a very nice dining room. The rooms are very large and it's very inexpensive.