John Henderson

Review of Victor Associates Advertising

My experience with Victor started when the home I ...

My experience with Victor started when the home I had my family member, X, in closed. I searched for various homes in central NC and came across one run by Victor near Dunn. In conversations with Victor he assured me that X would be well treated. I was told that there would be regular meetings with a specialist to help X continue to develop skills, that there would be regular activities that X could participate in, and that we could reach out at any time to communicate with X directly. Due to past experiences with other clients being abusive to X I made sure to ask questions regarding this topic but Victor assured me that the home would not allow anyone with violent tendencies to live there. Based on these details I decided to put X in the home.

Several weeks after placing X in the home I noticed that the regular activities were much further apart than promised. When I spoke to the house manager they dismissed my remarks. Then when I tried to set up appointments for a specialist for X I had to argue with Victor about filling out the paperwork as they didn't think a specialist was needed. Things got worse when Covid came around. Every other week there were new restrictions that prevented me from keeping in touch with X. I understand that extra precautions were needed but it was clear these rules were less to keep clients safe and more to keep the family of those clients away. At first staff members helped by using their phones to let me do video chats but when Victor found out he said that was against policy and shut it down. When I asked about giving X a tablet to use instead Victor gave this runaround answer about that not being in line with policy.

Then came the new, abusive client at the home. I was warned by staff that this client was violent but the house manager and Victor dismissed those claims as unfounded. One of my first visits with X after this new client moved in I noticed massive bruising along X's side. Note too that this was never reported to me within 24 hours as per the contract. When I asked the manager about it they side stepped my questions. A staff member privately contacted me to inform me that the new client had hit X and had also had several outbursts against staff. Once I heard this news I immediately called Victor. Instead of apologizing for the situation or explaining what would be done to prevent X from being hurt again Victor instead tried to interrogate me on how I got my information and lecture me on how I shouldn't be asking staff such questions. Any questions I asked about how a violent client could be allowed in the home or why I wasn't told of X's injuries were ignored. Since the house has cameras I requested evidence of the attack but was told that I wasn't allowed to have such information. Basically Victor stonewalled me at every turn.

From here things continued to go downhill. There were changes to the rules clearly designed to keep me out of the loop. I was told that I was only allowed to talk to the manager about anything going on in the house and that if staff were talking to me they could be reprimanded. I was told that I would have to jump through extra hoops to visit with X and that after such visits X would have to go through ridiculous new quarantine procedures. Several weeks after the first bruise I noticed that X once again had injuries from the violent client that had gone unreported and also learned that staff had been injured several times. Once again the manager and Victor refused to provide any explanation. At this point I reported the situation to the NC Board and took steps to remove X from the home. Two separate staff members also ended up quitting due to their disgust with Victor. As a parting jab, after I removed X from the home Victor informed me that I had broken some minor detail of the contract regarding steps to properly remove X so they would be keeping that month's worth of money intended for X.

If you care about those with disabilities then do not do any business with Victor. He does not care about the disabled, only profits.