Symphony Square

I am a card-​carrying member of «The Panini Generation». We’re like the «Sandwich Generation» only with a lot more heat and crushing pressure. As my mother’s dementia progressed, it became clear that her needs were overwhelming what my father could provide and we’d need to find a different solution.
One of the things we liked about Symphony Square was that they would allow my parents to live together in an assisted living apartment and have my mom «day trip» to the dementia unit. That never really worked out for a lot of reasons, some of which were in the difficulty my father had in separating from my mom, and some of which had to do with the facility’s actual ability to keep my mom in the unit. She demanded to leave, and if she could not be persuaded, they had to let her leave.
Licensing like this, we have learned, is more important than it’s presented. This is a «personal care home with special services» and as such, if any resident wants to leave they can. No matter what their mental state. The best the staff can do is distract and persuade. So, when my mother decided to walk out and go «home» (where she grew up) on a cold Sunday night, even though they accepted responsibility for her while my Dad went out, in the end she walked out of the place undetected. Five hours later the Philadelphia police found her unharmed in a very bad section of SW Philly.
Residents can also not have things like a ‘geri chair’ (big rolling easy chair) or rails on their bed to keep them from falling out because their licensing does not permit ‘restraint’. As a result, my mother went to the ER five separate times from October — November because she fell out of her bed. Rolling easy chairs (but not wheelchairs) and bed rails are considered restraints. Ok.
Here’s what I’d say. Everyone who worked at Symphony Square was very nice and accommodating. The place is high-​end hotel beautiful. The assisted living area was fine, with activities and decent restaurant style dining. They are very passive, in that nobody will take the initiative and actually pro-​actively do something, you have to ask for them to do anything. ASSISTED LIVING is FINE.
We DO NOT RECOMMEND the «MEMORY CARE/​DEMENTIA» unit. Structurally, the design is very poor. Hallways lead to exit doors. Exit doors have windows either out to the garden or to the main activity area. Dementia patients are naturally drawn to activity, and they want to go where things are going on. That they can’t is very upsetting to them. A good design has exit doors along the side of the hallway, and the hallway ending without an exit. Circular units are great, because the resident can safely wander but not find a way out. The carpet pattern is busy (should be a single shade, lighter, with dark boarders at the bottom of the wall) which makes it challenging for them to walk. Alzheimers and Dementia patients have visual issues and need different cues to navigate. Also they generally can’t «watch» TV and prefer sound and music.
The unit is small with 12 beds and up to 4 ‘day trippers’. They post activities each day but whether they actually happened seemed to be up to the staff if they wanted to or not. Many times the patients were parked in front of the TV and the staff went to text on their phones and talk to each other. There seems to be little training and oversight of the staff on a day to day basis, and there is getting to be some significant turnover. The staff mean well, but they clearly aren’t given any kind of direction or incentive to do things with these residents, and so they don’t. The breaking point for us was finding our mother completely naked in her room, no clothes anywhere nearby, incoherent and cold. Nobody could tell us how she got that way, and management just kept insisting their staff would never do that. Except they did.
Please look elsewhere for Dementia or Alzheimer’s Care. Understand that design matters a great deal for these vulnerable residents and good oversight of staff even more. This place is not what you need. For Assisted Living, it’s great.