The first thing I noticed when I toured Tessera of Brandon was there was no smell, other than food cooking when we went to the dining area. Everything was clean. Staff was everywhere. There was staff at the front desk, and staff walking around, and they were all talking to you. It was just very clean. They took me to the memory care side. There was a beautiful courtyard and there were several that the residents could go out with trees. The activity room is big, and they opened up the cabinets to show me the kind of things that they do with the residents on the memory care side. It just checked off all the boxes. I think they’re doing a really good job with my mom. I put a camera in her room and they didn’t question that. They’ve been very nice to her. The staff that I met have all been extremely helpful. They’ve just been right there through the whole thing with me. The place is laid out nicely, very inviting, and very friendly. They have interactive TVs where they have them all involved with questions and answers and doing different games on the TV, plus they have an activity room where they make all kinds of stuff.

My mom is in Tessera of Brandon. The appearance is great. The upkeep is great. The services are great, and the aides are very friendly. However, they could do better on the nursing staff. The activities are great. I have a calendar right here. I keep it because I go visit my mom so much. I go and watch my mom. I do go and watch a lot of activities and stuff, but I want to make sure I don't go during the bus ride or stuff like that. They have bingo, trivia, and Zumba. They do exercises in chairs. They have karaoke. They have a matinee. They have a crossword where they put it on a big screen, and they have to guess words. I cannot say enough about their activities. The activities director, Maria, is wonderful. The food is very good, so I sit with my mom. They have food selections. If they don't like it , they'll go make them something. It's not like they're going to starve or anything.

Tessera is very corporate driven and unfortunately the turnover of staff members, especially at the Director level is high. There have been 9 Executive Directors/interim Executive Directors, many Dining Services Directors, and 7 Memory Care Directors/Supervisors in 4 years. This is detrimental to the staff members, residents and families. Food choices are not the best and unappealing especially in Memory Care where the food is kept in a warming cart and the process for handing out the food, providing drinks, and attention to the Memory Care residents can be chaotic and lacks the attention these fragile residents deserve. Memory Care is not serviced well by Management and often overlooked by the Management team who never assist the Memory Care Supervisor in ensuring these residents are given appropriate attention and stimulating activities, or activities tailored to the uniqueness of Alzheimer’s or dementia disease. Not everyone can sit nor wants to sit in front of the tv for activities. There needs to be more walking, garden club type of activities, activities that simulate household chores- folding laundry, folding napkins, working with tools, dusting, etc. The Memory Care Activities area has not changed in 4 years. It is not stimulating and more music based activities with movement should be happening. In the past, there was a community dog and bunnies in Memory Care. There used to be visiting dogs and ponies that would be brought in. The residents, especially Memory Care, need to see and be able to pet animals. Such an easy fix but doesn’t happen. They do a great job of Wine Down Wednesday and the Activities Director when he performs at the piano, is enjoyed by all. There needs to be more of that. The rooms on both Assisted Living and Memory Care are decent sizes. The community overall is clean but Memory Care will smell like urine occasionally. Communication needs to improved with families. The monthly newsletter needs to be revamped to include articles other than just the Alzheimer’s group meetings that take place there twice a month. Beneficial group, but there needs to be more interesting content in the newsletter. Staff is overall nice and most are caring. The front desk employees are wonderful and care about families and the residents.

My mother has moved into Tessera of Brandon. It's a really beautiful place. The people care a lot about the people that live there. The residents are very happy and they have a lot of activities. It's a very, very good place. She's in memory care. The staff is exceptional. They're very caring, loving, affectionate, and very attentive to the people there. They love what they do. They're happy and that's hard to find. They have a variety of food. They have an opportunity to have several entrees, whichever one they want. If there's something that they don't like, the chef will prepare anything they want for them. It's very clean. It's a great place, the way it's set up, the activities that they have for the people and the garden areas. It's very user-friendly. Especially for the family members, they're very welcome there. It's just a great facility. It allows the residents to have more autonomy and become more independent. They don't feel like they're being taken care of; even though they are, they don't realize that. They enjoy the activities. They feel like this is home. They have their own apartments. It's the best place. If I had to be in a place, that's where I'd want to be.

We really liked Tessera of Brandon. We did a tour and we talked to the people there and everything. It was very nice. It's one of the cleanest facilities we saw, they're relatively new, and seemed like they had plenty of workers to help take care of the people that were there. It was laid out very well. They were excellent and very easy to work with. The staff member, I can't think of her name right now, but she was very knowledgeable. I got introduced to everybody working there. The one thing with Tessera that I really liked was the fact that everybody was trained for memory care people, right down to the staff that cleaned the rooms. She gave the example of these people kind of keeping the rooms pretty much in the same order all the time, but if a maid going in to take care of the room saw that something was different, books were stacked differently, or something was out of norm for what that person usually does, they would let the staff know so they could actually go see what was going on. That was one thing she brought out, and I was really impressed with that. The big difference was the cost, it was $2,000 more than the other place.

My wife is in Tessera of Brandon, and so far she is doing pretty good. The staff seems to be very caring and knowledgeable; they're taking pretty good care of her. They have people that lead exercise classes, and then there's singing, music, and arts. My wife prefers walking casually and getting her to sit down is difficult, but they have activities and stuff. The facility seems very clean, and they seem to be very attentive about the people being clean too. Food is pretty good too.