Morada Fort Smith

Just visited my mother here on the 1st. Very clean and comfortable atmosphere. We had lunch. The staff seemed caring and we had a super sweet (and funny) one working with us. Nice little apartment and they seem to have so much they can do here. Craft room, library, TV area for game night, free washing facilities, visiting areas. Most of all my mother is happy and is treated well.

Bring back the little in- house store for residents. It was so much fun trading our stuff around. We really miss it. Everything else is great . There is a great comradery amongst residents. We enjoy having something to do.

I used the suite to stay with a family member, it's been great. The meals are very good. The room is very clean!

A Story of Decline and Fall (missing money and bedbugs, too!) Mom moved into Butterfield (recently rebranded "Morada") in 2015 with mild dementia. At first, Butterfield mostly lived up to its marketing claims. The meals were decent, served at table with multiple courses and multiple choices. Breakfast always had fruit, though canned and not fresh. Hallway carpets were stained but mostly clean. The managers were caring and lived on-site. But as mom’s condition slowly worsened, so too did the condition of Butterfield. Corporate ownership changed several times. With each change, the concern was always to squeeze more profit out of the poor residents. Managers came and went. No more on-site supervision. If something happens after hours, “all we can do is call 911” bemoaned several residents. Chefs came and went. “We don’t have the budget to buy decent ingredients” was a common complaint. Plumbing leaks were common. Carpets were never cleaned or replaced (except on the first floor, where first impressions to prospective residents were important). I brought my own shampooing machine to clean the carpets in mom’s room. During the covid times, mom’s decline accelerated, as did Butterfield’s. Residents were isolated in their rooms for months at a time. Food trays of ever worsening quality were dropped off at their doors. They added a covid case counter to their website that always said “cases = 0” although I later spoke to several residents who suffered with covid during that time. The first I learned of the bedbug infestation was in May of 2021 while Skyping with mom. I saw and heard the maintenance man enter her room with exterminators and say “we’re here to check your furniture for bugs, remember we did that a while back”. Nobody told me. They sprayed poison and left a note on her bedroom door to not enter for several hours. By then, mom had trouble understanding that and was exposed to toxic chemicals. About 6 months later while I was in town visiting, the exterminators were back, and this time an assistant manager did pull me aside and whisper about the bedbugs. The exterminators wrapped up her bedding in a plastic bag and left it in the middle of her room (again with a note warning “do not enter until 4pm”). I don’t have dementia but I had to google what to do, and used the common washer/dryer to launder her bedding. The dryers only heat to lukewarm, however, and I witnessed live bedbugs in the dryer lint trap. Gee, I wonder how those bedbugs are spreading? On this last visit, I also experienced noticeably degraded food (no fruit of any kind at breakfast, soup with dinner that residents joked might have been mixed up with the dishwater, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with jelly only -- ran out of peanut butter). I noticed some clothing in mom’s closet was covered in mud. She was unable to remember what happened, but some residents informed me that she had fallen while walking around the building. Apparently there is a drainage problem, so that after a rain there are persistent mud puddles for days on the walking path. A couple of months later she fell again, this time catastrophically, broke 6 ribs, and was in intensive care for a week. That was the last straw, and we moved her out to a much better place in Van Buren. Mom’s last night at Butterfield was February 14, 2022 and we moved her belongings March 14. We bought new bedding and upholstered furniture. Butterfield charged her rent for the entire month of March, and before we could remove the auto-payment from her Arvest bank account, they also withdrew a full month’s rent for April which they have not attempted to return, even after multiple requests. It’s not even clear who took the money, the old corporation (Holiday Retirement) or the new one (Discovery Senior Living) or some other shady corporate entity. Finally, beware of the on-site caregivers, who charge dearly for every single task. For example, $900 per month simply to dispense 5 pills to swallow twice a day.