Aston Gardens At Sun City Center

I took a friend here for a tour. She had been communicating with Gio for a couple of weeks. He sent her many videos of different units that might work for her. When we arrived for her to make her selection he was helpful and patient with her. He really listened to her. She had a couple of requests and went out of his way to get information. Gio is a great asset to Aston Gardens.

We made the tough decision to put my Mom in the memory care here for a respite stay, to see if it would work out for her. As expected for a person with dementia it was a difficult transition from living at home. My sister and I spent 6 days in FL (we don't live here) while she moved in. I don't know what we expected, but we had told people we spoke with about our worries that she would not like it, and that we were looking forward to her being encouraged to go to the activities, and that we wanted to be contacted even after we left if anything was not going well. While we were there for the 6 days she first moved in we noticed the staff were mostly not nice to her (certainly most were not welcoming or happy), and no attempts seem to be made to encourage her or even let her know of any activities she might like to attend (even when they were literally 30 feet away from her doorway). They did not care if she didn't eat much, and they certainly weren't noting how much she ate. In addition the meals were heavy on desserts (cake at lunch and dinner) and light on actual real food (we noticed they served chicken nuggets, french fries, juice, etc). The activities on the calendar (when there was one - and there were days when there were no listings and the new month schedule wasn't updated for days) were not always happening at all, or were changed (ice cream social to just get another piece of cake). We set up an appointment for her to get her nails done in the assisted living area but when they went to get her, she didn't understand why, and no one found a way to encourage her to attend (like explaining very clearly what as going on). Then, after she was there about 11 days, she woke up and was acting "zombie-like" as described by my Dad. She had a dr appointment, just randomly, to meet the dr who worked there occasionally, and he chalked it up to a UTI (which she had no symptoms of and they had been saying since she got there they thought she had without any reason as far as we could see) and ordered her some antibiotic that was supposed to arrive later that day (that we found out later would arrive at 1 or 2am and therefore not be administered to her until the following day). She went to bed right after her 12:30pm dr appointment and never got out of bed again. They say they checked in on her every hour, which I don't doubt, but the checking in seemed to be just opening the door and making sure she was still there. She did not get dinner or even anyone waking her up to go to the bathroom until 4:30am when they found her having soiled her bed and vomited. She was non responsive at that point and brought to the ER. No call to me or my sister (they left a message with my Dad who did not get it becase it was so early). When we called to ask what happened (after finding out on our own because the ER had called my sister and I, but didn't leave a message either - we just called the strange number and realized it was the hospital) they did not have any real idea. They couldn't give a timeline or even any real answers until we, later that week (after flying out there), met with them and asked them to find out by email to the staff person that was working at the time). Nothing done in that whole week after it happened to even ask the staff what had happened. In the meeting they started out by happily asking us what they could do for us, when our mom had just died after being in their care for 11 days, with the last 14 hrs being in her bed without noticing why she was there for so long. She had had multiple brain bleeds and was in a coma for almost a week. I'm not saying they caused the brain bleeds, but timing is everything in these cases and they just left her in bed for 14 hours. You can decide for yourself if this is the place you want your loved one to be.They wouldn't let me give less than one star to post this.

I find Aston Gardens (north end) a very nice place with lots of activities to participate in as well as a very comfortable lifestyle.

I have been dealing with Jessica Galarza for the past 2 years for my mother. Jessica is the warmest, kindest person to deal with. She goes the extra mile to make sure that everything goes very smooth for your parents move. Aston Gardens is very fortunate to have such a wonderful caring person employed there. I cannot thank you enough.