Arabella of Red Oak | Luxury Senior Living: Independent, Assisted & Memory Care in Ellis County, TX

Welcome to Arabella of Red Oak – Where Comfort, Community, and Care Come Together.

In this episode of Senior Living NTX, we take you inside Arabella of Red Oak, a premier Civitas Senior Living community in Ellis County offering Independent Living, Assisted Living, and Memory Care—all under one beautiful roof.

Located in the heart of Red Oak, Texas, this vibrant senior living community is designed for those who want to enjoy the next chapter of life with style, connection, and personalized support. Whether you're an active senior looking to downsize, a family member searching for the right care for a loved one, or a caregiver exploring options for the future, this video gives you a firsthand look at what makes Arabella of Red Oak stand out.

Key Points Discussed:

- Lifestyle amenities that make every day feel like a retreat
- The difference between Independent, Assisted, and Memory Care options
- Insights from staff and residents who call Arabella home
- This is more than a place to live—it’s a place to belong.

📍 Located in Red Oak, Texas just minutes from Waxahachie and Dallas

📞 Want to sell your current home to make the move? 
Call a Seniors Real Estate Specialist® for expert help:
Paul Fritz – Waxahachie & Ellis County: 469-789-6769
Tara Garrison – Rockwall & North Dallas: 214-356-4670

🔗 Learn more about senior living options and real estate support at: www.fritzrealtygroup.com

Transcript

We are out here at Arabella of Red Oak today, and I've got one of my good friends with me, Fatima Wilson. She's going to talk to us a little bit about what Arabella of Red Oak is and what they have to offer. Awesome. Hi, my name is Fatima Wilson, as Paul said. I am the Community Relations Director here at Arabella of Red Oak Senior Community. Here at Arabella, we offer a continuum of care for seniors, fifty five and older. We have independent living, assisted living and memory care for residents, again, fifty five and older. Awesome. So assisted, independent and memory care all here on the same campus in the same community. Absolutely. All here. That's awesome to have all that in one location. Yes. Okay, so a couple questions for you today. I got my cheat sheet here. How does Arabella support residents in transitioning from independent living to assisted care if their needs change over time? Oh, that's a great question, Paul. So in our assisted living, we do have care staff, obviously, because it's an assisted living. We have wellness directors who oversee the care for all of our assisted living and memory care residents. So when we have an independent living resident who needs to transition to assisted living or memory care, because sometimes they do, we have circumstances where they have to transition from independent living to memory care. We have our wellness directors who come over in the comforts of their own home and assess the residents here to determine what their level of care is and how we can best help them at the assisted living. And even sometimes it can be difficult in terms of physically moving furniture from one location to the other, even though it's on the same premises, that can be a bit daunting for residents who are already changing and needing more care and assistance. So we even at times offer for our maintenance directors to come in and actually move the residence. We try to make it as seamless as possible for our residents. That's the most important thing. Okay. Awesome. So you have the wellness directors that whenever, I'm assuming if they're in the independent living side, start to express a need or desire to move over, or maybe once y'all start seeing maybe there is a need, the wellness directors, that's when they get involved? Absolutely. A hundred percent. Yes. We come over, we complete an assessment from top to bottom. We want to know how we can best meet their needs. So that's the point of us coming and doing the assessment just to ensure that we are going to be able to offer them the best care possible. Awesome. And I love that y'all will actually help them facilitate the move over. Absolutely. That's enough just to move and to go through that personally, but to be able to take that off the plate as well. That's exactly correct. That's what we aim to do. We want to help them. We want them to feel comfortable. We want them to know that we are here in every part of every way possible to help them, whether that is coming to do the assessment, whether that is moving the furniture or giving them care. We want to do whatever it is that they need. Awesome. I love it. What amenities and activities are available to promote an active social lifestyle for the independent living residents and how do they differ from those in assisted living? Okay. So here in the independent living, obviously, because they're more independent and they're more physically able-bodied, then they have a lot more high, I wouldn't say high, but I would say more vibrant activities than what they would have at the assisted living level, which just means they're a little bit more active. So they're doing a lot more outings than they are in the assisted living. Okay. They're doing, I would say, a lot of physical, a lot more physical activities in the assisted living than what they provide in the assisted living. it differs in that way. But at the same time, we do a lot in the assisted living as well. In our assisted living community, we go on outings during the nicer months. We try to go on outings every Friday, and that's going to different places, zoos, museums, restaurants, things like that. Over here in the independent living community, they're doing things like going to the casino. That sounds fun. Going to the casino. They even went on a cruise yesterday. here, the residents here in the independent living. So that's kind of the differences in the activities. But again, all of the activities are geared to meet the psychosocial needs of each resident here, whether it's independent, assisted living, or memory care. Awesome. You know, last week we learned about a hot air balloon that somebody got to do, and now we're going to casinos and we're going on cruises. Yeah, absolutely. We do it all. We do it all. I can't wait to be able to move in. Absolutely. We do it all. Come on over, Paul. Absolutely. And the other thing that I do, I know it's not so much of an activity, but I love, I've sat in a couple of your education, the downsizing panel, theProtecting our seniors. Yes, that's what it was. Yeah. So it's wonderful that they keep, they be in the community, keep those things top of mind and continue to educate the residents as well. Absolutely. On top of just having fun. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if there's something that we can't educate you on because we want to make sure that we're giving you the best advice, we will have an expert come in who is specifically educated and that has that skill set in whatever education you need, whether that is protecting our seniors from fraud and online scams, whether that's having physicians come in and talk about your overall health. We just try to do our best that we can to help the seniors who need the education. Awesome. I love that. I'm a big education guy. Me too. I like education. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Next question. So what's included in the monthly cost for both active lifestyle and assisted living residents and what additional services are available at an extra charge? Okay. So for the independent living, there is no extra charge. I know that sounds a bit funny, but I promise you there are no hidden fees, no extra charges. We are an all-inclusive community and here at the Independent Living, we offer housekeeping. We offer all utilities are included. We also offer trash pickup here. And this is a big one because most active adults, do not offer the meal service. It is not included. It is actually an additional cost. However, here at Arabella, it is a hundred percent included. You have a point system that we use here. And so it is all inclusive. And those are most of the things that are available for our residents here. Oh, another big thing is here at the independent living, we also offer emergency pendants that our residents wear. And typically when you're searching for senior care, that's usually only available at the assisted living level and memory care level. However, here at Arabella, we offer that at the independent level. So when you're in your apartment or you're moving about, you press that pendant and you're going to get first responders. They're going to be right there to help you. And while you're home, typically seniors are paying for that service. Here at Arabella, you do not have to pay for that service. It is absolutely included. So as you see, we are an all-inclusive community here for the residents in independent living. That's awesome. That's great. And when you're talking about that, I'm like the freedom, number one, like the housekeeping and all that stuff and the meal service where you don't have to figure out what's for dinner, what's my budget. It's included. It's there. Absolutely. And I have had the food here. It's pretty good. It's a real chef. It's not cafeteria style food. That's exactly correct. That's... So I love that part of it. And then the, like you're saying, it's like a life alert type of deal, the security pendant. Yes, that's exactly what it is. And again, more, I mean, I don't think any other independent living communities that I'm aware of even offer that for their residents. So here you're definitely at an advantage. And that's a huge thing. Like I said, middle of the night, something happens. If your spouse is not there or if you're single living here in the apartment side of it, that's huge to have that and somebody can come help. Absolutely. Absolutely. In addition to that, we do have a twenty four hour concierge service as well. So you may be in a situation where it may not be an emergency. Awesome. Yeah. I'll move here more and more. I'm just going to move in. I'm just going to live here. Come on. We want you here. I got like 8 years. And so this one's a big one that we get asked a lot. How does staff to resident ratio compare to industry standards and what level of personalized care can residents expect in assisted living? That's 2 parts. Okay. Yeah, that is a two part question. So I don't want to really, I don't know what other communities offer their assisted living, but I can tell you what we do here at Arabella. So... so we position our care staff to effectively be able to care for each individual resident. It's based on acuity level. And with acuity level just simply means the intensity of care required for each resident. And that's how we try to position our care staff so that our acuity levels that we have for our residents in place, we staff our caregivers so that they're able to give more person-centered care. So it's not just as simple as One caregiver to, you know, ten residents or 5 residents. No, it depends on what their acuity level is. So therefore, they're effectively able to navigate through the residents care needs based on the acuity. So if you have someone who has diabetes... one care staff to ten residents, that sounds good when you're thinking about the industry standard, which is about one to 14.That sounds great, but when you really dig in deep, you can have ten residents, But what if 7 of those residents have a very high acuity? Then you know what that means? That means that it's taking more time with each individual resident for you to care for them, give them the person-centered care that they need, give them the attentiveness that they need before you're able to navigate and move to the next resident. So you're leaving so much time in between residents that it really seems like they're not getting the care at the time that they need it. So although that number sounds great, one to 10, but when you think about the acuity, if that one care staff has residents that have a lot of higher acuity level, it's going to take them longer to navigate. At Arabella, we set ourselves apart because we position our staff differently. Right. Great time interval so you're not staying with one resident so long that the others are feeling like they're not getting the care that they need. And I know that's a lot, but that's how we like to explain it. That's huge because that's something I wouldn't have thought about previous to doing this. Yeah. It's not a one size fits all, like you said, one to 10, one to 14. That's right. It's a tailored solution to meet the needs of the residents. Absolutely. And I don't know how often y'all adjust or look at that, but it sounds like maybe over time as residents come in or leave, that gets adjusted or monitored to see if you need to add or Absolutely. A hundred percent. Absolutely. We are consistently, we train all of our staff, whether that is housekeeping or dietary or care staff, whomever you are. We train all of our staff members to be able to look at residents and tell us what differences they see. So if you walk into an apartment and you know that this resident is typically a very tidy resident, but you're going in and you're a housekeeper and you're going in to just help them clean up the apartment and you're noticing that Mr. Smith is leaving things where he typically wouldn't do that or he's not caring for himself or his apartment, typically in the way that you're accustomed to seeing, then we want you to report that. That is their job to report the change no matter what/how minuscule it seems. We want them to report it and let us know because that change could make all the difference in us being able to go in and assess this resident and make sure that they're okay. So it's all about making sure that you're training your care staff and all of your staff to know this change and report the change. That's very important. Love that. That is very resident client focused. I love that. It's loving and serving people. That's what we do. And that's why I like to be a partner with you guys so much. It's that intense care that y'all provide. And I learned something new every time. So thank you for being here and talking to us about it. If anybody's interested in learning more, please reach out to Fatima. How do they get a hold of you if they need to ask you questions or set up? Absolutely. You can reach me via email. My email is CRD@redoaksinyourliving.com. You can call me on my cell, which is 972-898-3629. I would be happy to help anyone in need. Just give me a call. I'll be there. Absolutely. And we're going to go do a quick tour and give you all some snippet quick peek. I don't know. Sneak peek, quick snippets, however you say the word, um, around the community. But I highly, if you've even thought about it for the next year or 2 years, or for a loved one, it's never too early to start. That's right. Schedule a tour. Just come see. You can eat here in the dining room. Um, you can come see the community. So I highly encourage it. And, uh, Absolutely, Paul. I appreciate you saying that because we absolutely offer VIP exclusive catered tours for each individual coming in to see our community. Even we offer the culinary team will offer a complete meal, a lunch service, a lunch meal or dinner so that you can come in and enjoy and get that whole experience of what it's like to dine here at Arabella. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Okay. Let's go take a tour.