What we will actually do for you
Take the call, ask a lot of questions, and narrow the field out loud so you can hear the reasoning rather than just receive a list. Then work the phones: who has a bed this week, who will accept your mother as she is today, who has just changed owners, who wants a week of notice.
After that, two tours rather than ten, with us there. Then reading the admission agreement with you before anyone signs, and staying reachable afterwards, which is when the questions that matter tend to arrive.
When you should not be calling us
If the real problem is that your father needs help for a few hours a day and everything else is fine, a move is the wrong tool and we are the wrong call. Home care agencies, adult day programmes and a serious conversation with his doctor will get you further.
If the question is whether he can still live alone, that is an assessment question, not a placement question. And if he is in hospital right now and the discharge is about rehabilitation rather than a permanent move, the case manager is the person with the power to help you today, not us.
We would rather say all of that on the first call than be paid for a move that should not have happened. Families talk to each other in this city and a bad placement follows you around.
Places to ask that have nothing to sell you
Long Beach runs its own health department rather than relying on the county's, which is unusual, and it means some services here follow the city line rather than the county map. Worth knowing when you are looking for help beyond a care home: transport, meals, senior services, adult protective services.
State licensing does not work that way. A residential care facility for the elderly in Long Beach is licensed by the state, not by the city, and the public register covers the whole region regardless of which city line a home sits behind. If you are checking whether a home is licensed, or looking up its record, that is a state question.
And before you rely on anybody's referral, ours included, look at the raw list. Every licensed home in Long Beach and the surrounding catchment is on one page here, 159 of them across 10 cities, with bed counts and licence numbers. We did not choose what goes on it and we are not paid to list any of it.
How to judge any referral you are given
Ask who pays the person giving it. Ask whether they are showing you everything licensed or only the homes they have an agreement with. Ask when they last stood inside the place they are recommending. Ask which homes they would not send their own mother to, and listen for whether the answer is specific.
A referral with no names attached to the negative answer is a sales call with better manners.
Starting the conversation
Tell us what has happened and how long you have. If a hospital has already set a discharge date, say that first, because it changes everything about how we work. If there is no date and you are trying to get ahead of a decision that is coming, that is a better call to be on and a rarer one.
Either way there is no cost and no obligation, and if the honest answer is that you do not need us, you will hear that instead.
Written and reviewed by Senior Placement Long Beach, , against the California Department of Social Services licence register.