The Troubling Truth About Memory Care: What Families Need to Know

And here's where dementia care can get particularly complicated.

Behavior.

Tony says a resident who is frightened, confused, bored, or in pain may communicate that through their behavior.

And that behavior can sometimes become grounds for eviction.

In California, we limit the justifications for an assisted living eviction to five reasons.

And one of them is threats to the health or safety of other residents.

And unfortunately, what happens with people with dementia when they get poor care and they're uncomfortable or in pain or they're bored, sometimes they use behavior as communication.

And that could be considered threatening to the other residents or maybe even to staff.

And so it looks on paper legitimate.

Oh, you actually pushed a resident on Monday day.

Therefore, we are going to evict you now because you're a threat to the safety of other residents.

And what the notice doesn't say is, well, this resident who pushed the other resident thought that she was in her room, but because of her memory impairment was actually in another resident's room and they had some sort of altercation and it led to this physical incident that would not have happened if staff had, you know, identified that this person was in the wrong room and fix the situation, or you created a space that was more identifiable as their room versus someone else's room.

Because when you get in these facilities, sometimes all the doors and apartments tend to look alike.

So even the best of us could get confused, let alone someone with dementia.

So there's potentially lots of root causes that could have avoided this situation.

So what should families ask before choosing a facility? Tony says don't just ask about activities, amenities, and dementia training.

Ask questions that may reveal what happens when things go wrong.

I think they ought to be asking questions like how many residents have you evicted in the last year? How many 911 calls have you made in the last year? How many reports of resident-unresident abuse have you reported in the last year to give a better indication of the quality of the care in that facility? And if the facility doesn't want to give that information, then that's a red flag.