Your advisor works one Valley, not fifty states

What the first twenty minutes covers

We ask about the body and then about the money and then about the driving. Can she get herself to a table, does anyone need to be there overnight, has there been a fall, is there a diagnosis on paper. What can the family hold every month for several years. Who is going to be visiting, and from which direction.

Then we tell you what we think, including the parts you did not ask for. If the honest answer is that she is not ready and six weeks of home care buys you a better decision, we say that, and it costs us the placement. We would rather that than move her twice.

The local knowledge that actually changes the outcome

Knowing that Van Nuys has 51 licensed homes and Tarzana has 20 is the easy half, and you can read that on our register page yourself. The half you cannot get from a list is which of them has a bed this month, which changed management in the spring, which will take an admission at four on a Friday, and which will quietly decline a resident who needs two people to transfer without ever putting that in writing.

It also means knowing the geography the way a family lives it rather than the way a map draws it. Whether a daughter coming from the Westside over the pass is better served east or west. Which homes are close enough to Encino Hospital Medical Center or Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana that a readmission is twenty minutes rather than an hour. Which of the 31 larger communities are genuinely walkable from a relative's apartment.

See the register we work from, all 336 homes

What we will not do

• We do not diagnose, stage an illness, or tell you it is time. That belongs to your parent's physician and we will say so every time you ask.
• We do not give legal or tax advice, and the questions about trusts and asset transfers belong with an elder law attorney, not with us.
• We do not guarantee an opening. Bed counts on the register are licensed capacity, not availability, and anyone promising you a specific room next week is guessing.
• We do not hide the homes that have never paid us. The full state register is on this site, including every home we have no relationship with at all.

How we are paid, said plainly

The home pays a fee when a resident moves in. Your family pays nothing, at any stage. That arrangement is standard in this business and it has an obvious pull built into it, so the honest thing is to name it: an agency paid on move in has a reason to want a move in.

What we do about that is publish the whole field. All 336 licensed homes in this catchment are named on one page of this site with their bed counts and licence numbers, 7 of them inside Encino and the rest across the Valley. You can hold our short list up against the register and see exactly what we left out. That is the only real check on a free service, and we would rather hand it to you than ask you to take our word.