Of course we wanted the best for our parents and choosing an assisted living facility can be tough. Christine Murphy gives us an advice on what too look for when choosing the perfect facility. You can listen to the show at : http://rockyourretirement.libsyn.com/assisted-living-facilities-and-what-you-should-look-for In episode 49 of Rock Your Retirement we talked with Christine Murphy about Assisted Living Facilities and what you should look for. Christine has held a RCFE Administrator’s Certificate since 2007. Her thesis work was documented in “An Exposition of Irregularities in Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFEs) in San Diego and Imperial Counties” (Montezuma Publishing, SDSU, 2010).  This was based on original research conducted on the public files of 354 Communities located in San Diego and Imperial counties. She is CARR's Program Manager in the County of San Diego. CARR is developing a website with a rating system for assisted living facilities in San Diego county. Chris placed her mom in an assisted living facility, but she saw things she didn’t like.  She felt that her mom was in danger at the facility.  Indeed, Mom's health and safety were being jeopardized. Mom passed away, and then Chris filed a lawsuit. Two years later the law suit settled, and she started looking for ways to leverage what she had learned. Chris wanted to benefit other families who had to make assisted living placement decisions. Their hope is that their work levels the playing field.  They want to advocate for consumers of assisted living services. They want them to be empowered and knowledgeable advocates for their resident in assisted living. We created the freebie for you, “5 things to look for in an Assisted Living Community: hint: it’s not the beautiful chandelier!”  To download the freebie, just go to http://RockYourRetirement.com/assistedliving. In case you are wondering, those five things are: * Administrator Information * Food * Staffing * Medication assistance * Personal care The freebie goes into a bit more detail. On the show, Chris goes through all of these items to help us find what questions to ask when looking at an assisted living facility. Did you find that you don’t understand the terminology?  Me neither!  I frequently call “assisted living facilities” by the wrong name!  (My bad.) That’s why her organization created a free Android App called Assisted Living 101.  It’s available at the Android Play Store (sorry iPhone users, but they are still working on the iPhone version).  So download that today. To end the show, Chris said that you DON’T have to RETIRE!  Working can be a reason to get up in the morning. Contact information:  http://rcfereform.org