Allentown Senior AdvisorHow do I start choosing a personal care home?
Decide on the license and care level first (personal care home, assisted living residence, secured dementia unit or nursing home), then the town, then check each candidate's DHS license and recent inspection summaries before touring.
In Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon counties, DHS's provider directory lists 68 licensed personal care homes and 2 assisted living residences, with 5,255 licensed resident places between them (retrieved November 6, 2026). Our roster can be sorted and filtered by town, size, dementia unit and latest violations.
How many homes should we tour?
Tour three or four homes in person after narrowing the list on paper, and visit your top choice a second time unannounced, ideally at a meal or in the evening.
Bring the same list of questions to each so the answers can be compared side by side.
What should I ask about staffing?
Ask how many direct care staff are on each shift and overnight, how many residents each aide covers, whether a nurse is employed and when, how long the administrator has been there, and how the home covers call-outs.
Pennsylvania sets a minimum of one to two hours of personal care per resident per day but no fixed ratio, so the home's own answer matters.
What should I look for in an inspection report?
Look at the sections cited, not just the count: repeat citations of the same section, supervision or medication errors that reached a resident, and a provisional license deserve direct questions.
Across the 68 Lehigh Valley homes whose latest DHS inspection summary we could read, 21 had no violations and the median was 2; the sections cited most often were 2600.103 (storing food, 23 homes), 2600.132 (evacuation, 14 homes), 2600.187 (medication record, 14 homes), 2600.185 (implement storage procedures, 11 homes), 2600.65 (12 hours annual training, 11 homes).
What should be in writing before we sign?
Get the resident-home contract, the full fee schedule including care levels, the policy on rate increases, the discharge conditions, and the support plan or the assessment it will be built from.
Ask specifically what happens if your parent's savings run out, and whether the home accepts SSI with the state supplement.
Is a small home or a large community better?
Neither is better in general: small homes offer consistent caregivers and a household feel, while large communities offer more activities, staff depth and often a dementia unit to move into later.
Of the 70 licensed homes in the three counties, 8 are licensed for 16 or fewer residents and 21 for 100 or more; the median capacity is 72.
How close to family should the home be?
As close as possible to the family member who will visit most, because frequent visits catch problems early and keep a parent connected, which usually matters more than a nicer building farther away.
Most licensed homes are in Allentown and Bethlehem, but the Saucon Valley, Macungie and Nazareth areas also have several.
