I am caring for my miserable Dad (91). Will he ever voluntarily go into assisted living?

My demented mom had some mixed experiences in adult care homes, some good and some not so good--- but mostly not so good until she had 1:1 care giving in her own apartment. It seems like these care homes would start out taking really good care of her, then there would be staff changes and it would go downhill and my mom would be neglected. After having this happen over a 2 year period, we finally put her in her own apartment with 1:1 care giving and a care manager, who had been overseeing and managing my mom's care for 2 - 3 years even when she was in the various facilities, who also oversaw the caregivers and managed the household. My mom got very good care and was doing quite well in this 1:1 care giving situation (better than she previously had been) until two of the caregivers got disgruntled and contacted authorities and lied to them about the care manager whom they didn't like because she made them do their jobs, instead of allowing them to sit around talking on their cellphones all day when they should have been doing for my mom-- their lies were later revealed during a court hearing and the judge threw out all of their statements as lies and threw out the entire case. Because of the authorities' profound ignorance and incompetence in their investigation of the two caregivers' statements and my severely mentally ill dad's lies to authorities, my mom was unnecessarily traumatized by authorities and was traumatically and unnecessarily removed from her familiar and comfortable apartment environment. She was initially placed in protective custody in a local hospital overnight and authorities wouldn't let any of her familiar caregivers stay with her in the unfamiliar hospital environment-- an assistant AG and an elder abuse detective basically dropped my mom off at the hospital and left her there alone-- a demented woman in a strange environment with strangers. All of this was the doing of the profoundly incompetent and stupid assistant AG who is very puffed up with her own importance and is extremely arrogant. My mom was so scared, she ended up curled up in a fetal position refusing to feed herself or sit on her own, all things she was doing right up 'til the moment the authorities traumatically and dramatically removed her from her apartment. My mom was then placed in the memory unit of a facility my dad was at. This wasn't where she wanted to be, and she had had it with all of the trauma and drama. Within a month of her unnecessary trauma at the hands of legal authorities, and in particular the assistant AG, my mom took things into her own hands, stopped eating (i.e., starved herself) and died.

I think that the only way that family can be reasonably sure that their elderly parents/relatives are being well cared for is to visit everyday and make sure things are being done right and that your elderly parent's (or other elderly relative's) needs are being properly and adequately met by the facility.

ba8alou: you're lucky that your mom is in a good facility. Unfortunately, those are far and few between. I've heard absolute horror stories about facilities for the elderly, and this came to bear in some of the places my mom was in. Considering that my parents live/lived in a state that has a high population of elderly who go to that location because it's a warm climate (it's not Florida), the state is rated as 48 out of 50 when it comes to providing adequately for the elderly. This, added to the fact of widespread corruption in this state's legal system, doesn't bode well for anyone retiring and growing old in that state.

I should also add that I was unable to check on my mom on a daily basis because I live 1200 miles from my parents. Fortunately, we had a care manager who checked on my mom frequently, but was unable to do so on a daily basis, as I think is necessary. And, my dad "couldn't be bothered" going to her facilities to check on her on a daily basis, mainly because he didn't want to spend the money for cab fare to go the two miles to her place. When my mom became demented, I had wanted my parents to move to the where I live so I could keep a closer watch over both of them. But, my dad adamantly refused. That's the other thing with having elderly parents: I think it's better if they can live near where at least one of their adult children lives so that the adult children can be keeping a better and closer watch on their parents. 1200 miles away is really too hard to do this. And, you have to depend on the word of others to tell you how things are going because your elderly parents certainly aren't going to be real truthful about this since they fear losing their independence if it's discovered that they're not managing very well.