Before you tour anywhere
Most of what you can learn, you can learn before you drive over
Every article about this tells you to trust your nose and watch the staff. Both are good advice and both require you to already be standing there. California publishes something better and almost nobody looks at it: the inspection and complaint record of every licensed home, free, with the actual reports attached.
Start here
Read the state's record first
It takes about two minutes per home and it is the only independent evidence you can get without walking in.
Find the home's licence number — it is on our register, and on the state's own search — then open its record. You will see every visit, every citation, every complaint and its outcome, and links to the investigation reports themselves.
Then read it properly, because three things trip families up.
A citation is not a citation
A Type A is the serious one: the Department issues it where there is an immediate risk to health, safety or personal rights, and its own examples are lack of care and supervision, no fire clearance, and access to dangerous chemicals. A Type B is for something that may become a risk if it is not put right — its examples are faulty record keeping and inadequate staff training. Both matter. They do not matter equally.
A complaint is not a finding
The state records the outcome of each one. Substantiated means a preponderance of evidence that it happened. Unsubstantiated means there was not enough evidence either way. Unfounded means it was false or could not have happened. Across Anaheim the published record holds 121 substantiated findings against 418 unsubstantiated and 92 unfounded. Counting complaints rather than outcomes will give you entirely the wrong picture of a home.
A clean record might just be a young one
The published visit history only runs back about five years, and a home licensed recently has had almost no opportunity to accumulate anything. Always read the citation count beside the visit count. Nothing found across twenty visits is a fact. Nothing found across two is barely information.
What ordinary looks like
So you can tell unusual from normal
Without a sense of the distribution, any number looks alarming. Here is the whole city.
121
licensed homes in Anaheim
43
have no citations and no substantiated findings
on the published record
65
have at least one Type A citation
the serious category
942
investigation reports published
free to read, home by home
Which means a home with something on its record is not unusual here — most have something. What is worth your attention is the pattern: repeated findings of the same thing, anything in the Type A category, and substantiated complaints about care and supervision rather than paperwork. Read the reports. They say what actually happened.
Every licensed home in Anaheim, with its record — or look one up yourself at the state.
Then go and look
Six things worth more than the tour
- 1The smell. Not of disinfectant — of urine, at two in the afternoon, in a corridor. One room on one day is life. A building is a staffing problem.
- 2Who is sitting alone. Walk past the lounge and count the people parked in front of a television facing away from it. That is the clearest picture of what the day is actually like.
- 3Whether staff use names. Without glancing at a chart or a door card. It is very hard to fake and it tells you how long people have worked there.
- 4What happens at 3am. Ask who is awake, not how many are on shift. There is a real difference between awake overnight staff and somebody asleep on site, and it is rarely volunteered.
- 5How long the carers have been there. Turnover matters more than furniture. Ask the carer in the room, not the person giving the tour.
- 6The answer to a hard question. Ask what would end the placement. A home that answers precisely has thought about it. A home that says “we would never ask her to leave” has not read its own admission agreement.
Go unannounced, mid-afternoon, on a weekday. Then go back once more at a different hour. The second visit is the one that tells you something.
Common questions
Judging a home, answered
- How can I check if a care home has been reported?
- Every California care home's enforcement record is public and free. Go to the Department of Social Services care facility search, put in the licence number, and you get the visit dates, the citations, the complaint outcomes and the actual investigation reports. It takes about two minutes and it is the only independent evidence about a home you can get without walking through the door.
- What is the difference between a Type A and a Type B citation?
- The Department's own definitions: a Type A citation is issued for the most serious violations, where there is an immediate risk to the health, safety or personal rights of people in care — its examples include lack of care and supervision, no fire clearance, and access to dangerous chemicals. A Type B is for violations that may become an immediate risk if they are not corrected, with examples like faulty record keeping and inadequate staff training. They are not the same thing and a count that lumps them together tells you very little.
- A home has complaints against it. Is that a red flag?
- Not on its own, and this is where families most often misread the record. The state separates outcomes: substantiated means there was a preponderance of evidence that the violation occurred, unsubstantiated means there was not enough evidence either way, and unfounded means the allegation was false or could not have happened. Across Anaheim's licensed homes the published record holds far more unsubstantiated and unfounded findings than substantiated ones. A complaint is somebody raising a concern. A substantiated finding is the state agreeing with them.
- Is a home with no citations automatically better?
- No, and the biggest reason is how recently it was licensed. The state's published visit history only goes back about five years, and a home licensed last year has had very little chance to accumulate anything at all. A clean record on a home inspected twenty times means considerably more than a clean record on a home inspected twice. Always read the citation count next to the visit count.
- What should I look for when I actually visit?
- Go unannounced, mid-afternoon on a weekday, and go back a second time at a different hour. Notice whether staff use residents' names without looking at a chart. Notice whether anybody is sitting alone in front of a television in a corridor. Ask what happens at three in the morning and who is awake. Ask how long the care staff have worked there, because turnover tells you more than decor does. And eat a meal there if they will let you.
Citation and complaint-outcome definitions are the California Department of Social Services' own, from its published glossary. City-wide figures are read from the Department's facility record for every licensed Anaheim home. We deliberately name no home as good or bad on this page: care homes pay us a fee when a resident we introduced moves in, so our opinion is not the one you should be weighing — the state's record is.
Last reviewed . Figures are re-checked against their sources whenever this page is revised.
Tell us which homes you are looking at
We will read the state's record on each of them with you, and tell you what the reports actually say. We have a commercial interest in this city, so check us against the record too — it is all public.
Tell us who you are looking after
Four short questions. Nothing you answer is shared with a facility until you say so.
Prefer to talk now? (714) 975-9652, open every day until 6pm.