Avamere At St Helens

Avamere changed dramatically with a management change earlier this year.
I must first say — I disagree totally with their management practice of allowing executives to replace employees with their children. I followed every process I could find to give feedback and improve conditions for my father, but their current management spent more time explaining why I didn’t understand or was wrong than to address issues. Their Human Resources manager was unresponsive, and local manager (also influenced by executive management) did not follow through.
They are saving money by reducing care and quality for residents’ food, conditions, and activities in lieu of improving external appearances. The outings, food, activities and stimulation are seriously lacking in number and creativity.
Day to day care-​givers are trying hard — but the management team stay in their offices and do not interact with the residents or family. Yes, it is the best facility in St Helens, but the bar is set pretty low.
My father was excited when he fell and broke his hip because he had «escaped» from the facility. I have since found several other options — not as close, but infinitely better management and care.
If you are willing to put in some drive time and effort into your loved ones living conditions, by all means — do so! There are people and services available to help you — it’s worth the effort to find them.

I feel compelled to enter a review about Avamere St. Helens because our experience was pretty bad. Gramps lived there about three years. Things were fine at first, but as his care needs changed their ability to respond was incompetent. Their typical MO was to send him to the emergency room for every little thing… complain about him being troublesome… and insist he move to the memory care area which was, as the another reviewer stated, a nightmare. There were at least two times (maybe more) where he pressed his emergency call button and got no response. Perhaps the most concerning, however, were interactions with the executive director who was ineffectual, unprofessional, and out of touch. Thank goodness our family is local and not from somewhere else across the country. Once all this became clear we quickly moved my dad to a different facility in Portland and it was the best thing we could have done. Comparing the level of care and professionalism is like night and day. My advice: look elsewhere for your loved one.

Avamere’s been a little hit and miss. I’ll keep it brief and stick to the main points:
Pros:
— Definitely the nicest assisted living facility in St Helens
— Spacious rooms, including two bedrooms with views in three directions
— Lots of activities and a wide range of possibilities depending on how much help you need or how much freedom you want
— Decent food. Little boring but it’s definitely edible.
— Two gardens, one where residents can have a bit of gardening space in front of their apartment, and where they can walk around and help with the gardening. And then a second that is closed off for memory care, though I’ve never been inside of that.
— They seemed very diligent about helping my grandmother take care of her cats, including feeding them and changing their litter boxes when my grandmother was in nursing for weeks after an operation
— Fantastic staff at the ‘lower’ levels, the people who cook, clean, and actually interact with the residents all day. They know all the residents very well, and they’re really dedicated to their jobs.
Cons:
— My grandmother got extremely sick and was rushed to the hospital where she nearly died. Even though Avamere had been instructed to call her caretaker (family friend), as well as my aunt, and me, in serious emergencies, they only called her caretaker. Once. They left a message and never tried calling again. My aunt and I only found out that my grandmother was in the hospital in critical condition when the SURGEON himself called both of us, having received my grandmother’s emergency contact list along with her chart.
— Medication: They’re good about the residents’ medication, but at the same time I feel like they need to pay more attention to residents’ well being. My grandmother had all kinds of issues, and only when she moved to a new home did they finally say: Hey, perhaps we need to look a little more closely at what she’s taking and go over the whole list with her doctor. That resolved a number of her health issues.
— Bad staff at the ‘higher’ levels. The woman who runs the place seems super insincere and it seemed like she didn’t know my grandmother at all.
— The Memory Care ward is the most depressing place I’ve ever been. Way too little stimulation, understaffed, it’s like a horrible waiting room where residents wait to die. So awful, we ended up moving my grandmother to another place (not in St Helens) within 4 weeks or my grandmother being –forced– into memory care by Avamere. We were horrified.
— Speaking of being –forced– into memory care: After my grandmother came back from the nursing home, she had an episode of confusion where she wandered out (not sure how the staff didn’t notice) and someone found her in Safeway looking for her parents. Partially this was due to her dementia, but above all the confusion was the move back from the nursing home to her old apartment, which was difficult for her. People with dementia get very confused when they’re suddenly in entirely different places. So how did Avamere handle it? They basically just called us and said: «Your grandma is a liability, we refuse to take responsibility» (again, after a SINGLE episode, she hadn’t even been there in 8 weeks, and she had never wandered off before the surgery) and they insisted that she move into Memory Care, not just soon, but the SAME DAY. Most of our family doesn’t even live in this country, and the one daughter who does, is in the Bay Area. There was no way she could come down there the same day to move my grandmother. So I had to drive up immediately from Eugene and meet my grandmother’s caretaker there.
We distracted my grandmother and then moved as much stuff as possible into her new Memory Care room, hanging up a few photos and getting her bed and a chair down there. The move was incredibly stressful for us and detrimental to my grandmother who was even more confused and upset now. I have no idea why they insisted on moving her the same day, giving us no time to prepare or have her new room ready for her. And like I said, their Memory Care unit was like a waking nightmare. The staff was nice, but it just wasn’t enough. Too little space, too few activities, no program, no scientific approach to memory care, no stimulation for residents, nothing. I lay awake worrying the entire 4 weeks it took us to select a new place and get her a room there.
So basically: Pretty good choice for Assisted Living. Very bad choice for Memory Care.