My husband is in Clarendale of Chandler memory unit. He's only been in there for a couple of weeks now. So far, they've been working well with me. The other place he was in was just a little bit far from my home. I like Clarendale because it's a little bit closer, so I could get over there more often. Both of them are shorthanded. It just depends on how much attention that my husband is going to need. It's very nice and clean. I've eaten there before. They have a menu, and it's good food. They just hired a new activity director, and she starts at the end of the month.

Clarendale of Chandler was huge. It's like four or five stories, but it was a little farther away. They have separate memory care, which is on the first floor, and the girl who toured us was excellent, Tracey. She came out to talk to me and said they had two openings right now and they do respite. The place was clean and nice. When you walk in, they make you sign in and they print out a nametag for you, so they know who's in the building all the time (which I thought was good). They had a beautiful dining room and Tracey said that if you ever wanted to eat there, you could. They also have a pool, activities, and everything. I didn't see that many residents, though, compared to all the other three places I've been to. I only saw a couple, but that's about it, and maybe a couple more staff members.

My husband was in Clarendale of Chandler. He got moved there into their memory care. He should not have been in their memory care and I could not convince them otherwise because I was in the hospital at that time and my daughter needed a place to put him and it was like on an emergency basis. Hospice and the social workers helped her choose a place, and it seemed like a nice enough place, but they weren't meeting his needs properly, and some of the caretakers there were downright not nice, and it was further from my house. I want someplace closer, and a little more accessible, and a little more cost effective. They got a doctor diagnosed him with undetermined dementia, so that he would qualify to be in the memory care, and they didn't ask us. They just put him in there and some doctor down there that we never heard of gave him that diagnosis, so they could put him in there, and that's another reason why I pulled him out of there. I have no idea about his room. They would not let us go to any of the rooms. I saw just a little bit when he took a couple of pictures with his phone. I could see the room slightly. It was a small studio room, had no closet, he had a small wardrobe to put his clothing in, but basically it was just a very small studio type unit. They started doing hallway visits, but it was like a little utility hallway off the back of the building that we could visit, and one time it wasn't available, so they let me visit him in the dining room. It was just a small dining room with not very many tables in there. It looked decent and clean, but I was more interested in talking with my husband than looking around and seeing what the dining area looked like. Basically, you couldn't get past the front door. They took care of him and they did him OK, but they lost his glasses for a week and a half. They found them, but when we moved him out of there they lost his hearing aids. He had some good caregivers that he liked, but he had some that he said were downright mean to him. One of them broke the screen on his phone, another one yanked up his tablet out of his hand once because she said it was too loud and it was too late at night and he should not be using it. Another time after dinner they left him in his transport chair in the hallway and told him that he needed to exercise and should make his own way back down to his room. He was stuck there for a little while until somebody else came along and moved him down. I complained and I think they just assumed that because he's in memory care that he doesn't know what he's talking about and that their staff is all good. They wouldn't believe me because I was getting my information from my husband and they wouldn't believe him. I didn't hear too many complaints about the food down there. They gave him the pineapple and watermelon that he asked for the constipation. I never saw what the inside looked like other than the front entranceway. He did get to bingo once in a while, but because they had very few people in their memory care unit the really didn't have much activities. They had an activity director who did crafts with them, but most of the time he was on his own working with puzzles or just going to the TV room. I was paying their highest level for memory care and he did not need it, and there were people in their memory care that required more work than he did and yet we were paying the same price that they were paying. We were not getting our value for our money down there at all.