We were sold on Eastcastle Place as a luxury facility, providing activities, outings excellent food, and most importantly, community.
It seems appropriate to write this review before Mother's Day. Our mother has lived on the 5th floor, which is the hospital section of this facility, for nearly three years.
The marketed Eastcastle is not what you see on the 5th floor. My mother has been given no activities, no physical therapy, and the menus are at best like primary school food: a lot of chips, bread, juices loaded with sugar.
The worst of it is the care. My mother has been abandoned up there. Staff reply that because my mother refused to eat they had no responsibility to do anything. I live in Los Angeles and have asked staff to Grandpad (a video phone service I pay for) so that I connect with her. They do nothing to help me. They don't even deliver my letters to her. I have to send them to my brother and sister-in-law so that she gets them.
The weekends are particularly awful. They employ non-Eastcastle staff who do not know my mother. My mother has been treated roughly, and has been ignored, not fed, not given water.
Because she is categorized as "Hospice" though she does not have cancer or any other disease, they have been medicating her with morphine.
When I saw her yesterday, on camera, she looked so drugged up I thought she was dying.
Life for her there is a nightmare. She does not have dementia. She now has pain, as she has had no physical activity for nearly three years, and suffers from arthritis.
Staff "nice" this away, and tell me how much they love my mom, and how much the staff loves her. This is not enough.
For the ridiculous amount we pay, my mother deserves staff who deliver her mail, even read her mail to her. Staff who check in on her, and have relationships with her so that she eats and drinks.
The charge nurse needs to inform staff of her condition and keep everyone in the know.
Activity staff need to sit with her and spend time in her room. She loves to sing and read poetry, and she loves jokes and stories.
My Milwaukee family does visit. Yesterday, they reported they saw a huge rat in the parking lot. Is the place even as clean as it should be?
When family visit, they should be greeted and offered hospitality. Seats. Water. Maybe even a conversation on how Mom is doing. The apathy, the lack of communication, the lethargy, the denial.
Is this any way to treat an elder? When your loved one has health needs you cannot handle in having her live with you, you have to trust a facility to care for her.
But facility it is, nothing like a home. Happy Mother's Day indeed.
I am disappointed in you, Eastcastle. You really sold me. And you have let us all down, especially the one you purport to care for.
What do you care about? Your profit? Your expansion? I sincerely hope you read this and start looking at what you are doing on the 5th floor. You can improve and you need to. ASAP. read more
