Overall sentiment in the reviews is mixed but strongly polarized: many reviewers praise the administration, staff, facility and programming, while a smaller but serious subset report significant care and safety issues. Positive comments repeatedly highlight a compassionate, knowledgeable and organized administrator and numerous caring, friendly, and accommodating staff members. Multiple reviewers describe the facility as clean, attractive, very well maintained, and home-like, with bright, spacious rooms that let in plenty of light. Dining receives generally favorable marks — words like balanced, tasty, and good with choices recur — and there is specific praise for an engaging activity director and the separation of memory care and assisted living into separate buildings, which some families may view as a benefit for specialized care.
Staff and management are a recurring strong theme on both sides. Several reviews explicitly call the administration "extremely well run" and the administrator compassionate and organized; staff are often characterized as super nice and very caring. These points suggest that when families encounter the praised staff and leadership the experience can be very positive. However, an opposing thread in the reviews alleges poor staff performance, staff that appear motivated by paychecks, and even explicit statements that staff are uncaring. That polarity indicates variability in staff behavior or consistency of care across shifts or units.
Facilities and rooms are another area of contrast. Many reviewers emphasize cleanliness, attractive spaces, and large bright rooms, while a few note small rooms or mention cleanliness problems. Of particular concern are isolated but serious reports: a bed bug infestation and an "oxygen safety incident." Such items are single-line items among the summaries but are significant because they relate directly to resident safety and infection control. The mention that memory care and assisted living are in separate buildings is a practical detail reported positively by at least one reviewer.
Dining and activities generally trend positive: multiple reviewers describe balanced and tasty meals with choices, and an activity director is called engaging. Nevertheless, a number of reviews mention food arriving cold, which suggests inconsistent food service temperature or timing issues that could affect resident satisfaction. Activity programming appears to be a strength overall based on the comments provided.
Care quality and safety are the most critical areas where opinions diverge. Several reviewers say residents receive good care and praise staff attentiveness, but there are alarming accusations of neglect, patients falling, and being "not looked after properly." Combined with the bed bug allegation, an oxygen safety incident, and claims of misrepresentation of the facility’s care quality, these reports point to potential systemic or episodic lapses that warrant careful scrutiny. The reports that staff are "motivated by pay checks" and that some reviewers feel the facility misrepresents itself further suggest possible issues with staff retention, morale, training, or oversight.
In summary, reviews portray Lakewood Senior Living/Specialty Care Assisted Living as a facility with many real strengths — particularly in administration, individual staff members, physical environment, and some aspects of dining and activities — but also with notable, serious concerns reported by other reviewers. The pattern is one of strong positive experiences for many families and residents, contrasted with a smaller number of reports describing serious safety, cleanliness, and care-quality problems. These conflicting themes suggest variability in resident experience that could be due to differences by unit, shift, time period, or individual staff. Anyone evaluating the community should follow up on the negative items: ask for documentation about bed bug resolution and prevention, details of the oxygen-safety incident and corrective actions, fall and incident rates and reporting, staff turnover and training practices, and recent inspection or licensing records, while also verifying the consistently reported strengths in administration, cleanliness, activities, and dining.
