St Dominic Village

My grandmother was a resident at Saint Dominic village for about six months from August 2017 until March 2018. We chose this facility due to its highly Catholic sensibilities. Our grandmother is very Catholic and she loved the church on campus as well as the near daily religious activities available. Her accommodations were nice and she said she also really enjoyed the food which was a plus. The roster of activities that they had was also very interesting. It was challenging for us to find an assisted living facility because our grandmother does not speak any English, only Spanish. We were assured throughout the application process that this would not be an issue. Unfortunately, it proved to be an issue from day one when the head nurse informed us upon move-in that she would not be able to take care of our grandmother despite everything that was told to us during the application process. We managed to come to understanding that day and moved her in. They do you have one nurse who speaks good Spanish and she was a huge help to us throughout the process. We did experience some issues from time to time with the language barrier including the facility not allowing our grandmother to go on some off-campus trips as they said they cannot communicate with her. Wish they had been honest about this upfront. Where we became completely disillusioned with the facility was when our grandmother's dementia and paranoia flared up early this year. She sometimes suffers from paranoia and believes that others are speaking negatively about her when this is not the case. She became very defensive and even lashed out at one resident, which we were promptly informed about. None of my family thinks that this is acceptable and we began to work with her psychiatrist to find a medication regimen that would help her with these feelings. Before we had the chance to do much more or even meet with Saint Dominic for a family meeting which they had requested and we had agreed to they called my brother-in-law one morning and asked us to please pick her up by noon! As you can imagine, this was a very distressing phone call to receive! They then informed us that she would need to immediately leave as they considered her a threat to the community. While I do not condone anger or violence in anyway, our grandmother is 4'9" and weighs about 100 pounds … So I'm sure she wasn't going to injure anyone! I have since spoken with the department of aging and disability services and we are filing a formal complaint. I believe their attempt to kick her out is illegal and against the contract that we signed up. The next week was incredibly stressful to say the least as we were forced to provide a person to care for her during every waking hour even thought we were already paying the facility to care for her. We have since moved her out to another facility that is much more understanding of elders with dementia and paranoia. St Dominic told us point blank that they do not deal with these issues. So bottom line would be, if your elderly loved one has any sort of dementia, paranoia, or Alzheimer's Saint Dominic is absolutely not a place you would want to send them as they have no patience or understanding here. Very disappointing for a facility that claims to "Care for our elders with the compassion of Christ."