Richland Place Greensboro, NC

My father has moved into Richland Place. I went to visit and it's like a home and very open. They have a community room and a nice dining room. The staff is very helpful and friendly. The residents are very nice, friendly, and welcoming. They're very caring and understanding and they've been helpful with me in understanding dementia and why my dad needs to be there. He enjoys the food. They have a big courtyard and he enjoys being able to go into the courtyard and sit. They have a salon.

We have decided on Richland Place for my parents. It's an excellent place. The administrators, the executive director, and the head nurse are extremely helpful in trying to work with the rest of the team to make the transition for my parents, and worked very hard to make that transition possible. They very early realized that my parents' needs were different, because my father had very advanced Alzheimer's, and my mother has general dementia, which means she's capable sometimes of making wrong decisions. She can't make life decisions, but she's definitely more aware of her surroundings than my father, and so that poses difficult experiences for them. Richland Place is able to look at that and work with me and work with the family. They're always very good at letting us know what's going on. We want to be involved, and they encourage family involvement, and they don't see that as a threat, although they're very good at reminding us of when it's good for us to be involved and when we should just kind of stay away for a little while and give the residents time to adjust, because sometimes family members can make things worse. So, we've had a lot of dealing with that, with my mother. They have a wonderful activity director. She's really good and she engaged both my parents at different times and on different levels with what she was doing. She tries to offer a variety of activities starting in the morning. Some are learning ones, like fun memory games. Others are just like getting their blood flowinging and their limbs moving. Some are just happy activities like singing and dancing. They just had Thanksgiving, a little thing for the families to come to. They had a little something on Thursday and something on Saturday, so loved ones could come in and share some fun activities and treats with the residents. They don't allow us to eat their food. It looks good, I've seen it. They definitely give them three really good meals a day, and somebody comes and gets the residents who might not be able to remember that it's time to eat. They have a nice cafeteria for everyone to eat with tables, and they seat everybody there, and then get them their water or tea or whatever, and bring them their food. I think it looks good. I haven't had it, but it smells good. The facility kind of needs an update, like the plumbing seems in need of a little bit of an update. It's kind of an older building, and they are making changes, but it is certainly functional.

My sister moved to Richland Place a week ago. It's the best that we could find for what we needed. I think it's a very good place; I like it. The people were much friendlier than the other place we went. I did not see the food, but she is eating well so she must like it. The menu was great, and they gave snacks, so that was good, too. One other thing that we really like is that they keep the residents busy. They have activities three times in the morning and three times in the afternoon. They also have a social time where they can just walk around and visit each other; they can do that. They have an outside court that is enclosed completely, so they can walk out and get to whatever they want to do in the garden area, which I thought was very nice. They have rocking chairs on the porches for them to sit in and rock if they want. They have concrete walkways so you can walk around the garden and get a little bit of exercise that way. They also have flower beds or garden beds that they could plant garden seeds on if they want to do that. They encourage them to get out there and do that. They have block-section kinds of hallways. To me the hallways are fine. I didn't get lost, and I wasn't unable to find my way. It's pretty simple and easy to get around. She's in memory care. It was better than the other places we looked at. I think that the value for the money is good. I have no complaints about this place at all.

My dad was at Richland Place for well over a year. They were good to him, but he needed a little more care than they could provide. You have to ring a bell to get in and that part was hard. It's not as clean and the caregivers were not as caring as where he is currently. The food was good. The activities were good when he was there originally, but they kept losing their activity director and it went downhill. It has great potential if they could get their act together. They were really good to my dad, and they helped us a lot. They should just work on their organization and improvement of their workers.