Life's Journey SL Taylorville

Takes outstanding care of their neighbors, Activites for the Neighbors are well thought out, trained Staff, Professional Management. I don't understand the bad reviews towards this Facility, every time I visit my family member, she can't tell me enough of how good they are treading her. Every time I talk to the Staff, I get treated very lovely, and even when I ask questions, they try to help me as much as they can. If I ever needed to bring in another family member, I would most definitely choose this Facility over any other in Taylorville. I really can't say much else to it other than the fact that the Bad reviews are not accurate. And when I asked Management about it, they explained to me what has happened with those families and that there are always people whom you can't make happy even when you follow their instructions. All and all I would give this Facility a 10/10

Staff works extremely hard. They have to go through individual dementia training at least once a year plus a training once a month. Three very beautiful halls, full time nurses, and a new Executive Director that has been a nurse and a DON for many many years. They love every one of the neighbors, and have amazing activities 3+ times a day plus exercises.

Unprofessional and untrained staff. We could not get mom out of there fast enough. From what I understand, the facility has completely changed hands from when they first opened. They are now 100% corporate/for-profit and the well-being of the residents is clearly not their priority. Avoid at all costs!

We moved our mother out of this facility in under 2 months and forfeited a $1500 move-in fee. Even though she was walking with a walker when she moved in, she was kept in a wheelchair while there and by the time she left she had lost her ability to walk. Even with keeping her in a wheelchair and having 2 alarms on her that were constantly going off, they still reported multiple falls to me. The activities calendar is a joke. I inquired about the exercise classes that were listed every day at 11:00 and was told that exercises were done individually throughout the day. When I asked about my mother's exercise they told me that that was when they helped her get to the bathroom. This facility is cut up into 3 different units. There is one unit that is new and very nice. The unit my mother was on had a very trashy look. ie - duct tape on the blinds, plants that were 1/2 dead, etc. When I asked about some of the activities that I was not seeing, I was told that music activities were held in one unit, craft and baking activities were held in the "new" unit and church services were held in the unit my mother was in. So the residents do not have equal access to all the activities unless an aide is willing to take them to the other units. The activities I often witnessed on my mother's unit was the same movie being played over and over (Mama Mia) and an aide sitting with a couple of residents coloring or trying to get them to play Go Fish - no one understood the game. They advertise that their staff has specialized alz training. I never saw that. I saw a lot of high school students working there who were often impatient and at times even argumentative with the residents. When I attempted to address these (and many other) concerns with the administrator, she was sarcastic, demeaning, and actually hung up on me, not once, but twice. One of these times was when I was questioning why my mother's eye drops that had been given to the nurse the night my mother moved in , had been placed on a shelf and never given to her! I didn't realize this until I received a bill from the pharmacy a month after she had been there and saw that there was no refill for the eye drops. The administrator also chastised me when she found out that I had told the hairdresser at the facility that bed bugs had been found on my mother's unit. These are just a few of the issues we encountered during our mother's brief stay at this facility. Once we decided to move her, I sent a detailed list of all of my concerns to the home office. I never received any response of any kind. My mother is now in an actual Alz facility and she is so much more relaxed and content than she ever was at Life's Journey. I do not recommend this facility at all!!!!

My mother was here for several months, with many MANY scares occurring. One thing I observed more than once was her unsupervised, eating 2 and 3 slices of pie with her fingers even though she’s on a 1500 calorie a day diet. Also, almost every time I came to visit, my mother didn’t have her cane (ultimately falling a couple weeks ago) and they never called an ambulance or asked the doctor for an X-ray of any kind. The nurse on duty didn’t even know which one of my mothers knees was fake, and didn’t bother to inspect the injury before calling me. She simply stated Your mother fell and I think her knee is possibly out of place. I can tell through her jeans that it looks lop sided but I’m not sure. She then asked which knee had been replaced. Just wow. How do you not know? My mother LIVES THERE. Another tragedy. My mother has vascular dementia and MUST wear her Cpap at night because without it, the next day her mind is that of a small child that has outbursts. Her cpap averaged 3-4 hours a night which was PROOF that she wasn’t getting enough oxygen to her brain and PROOF that they weren’t placing it properly or checking on it regularly. Instead of fixing this very simple problem, the facility went behind the family’s back and asked the doctor for my mother to be given a sedative for her “behaviors” (medication that we as a family already declined a month prior to this). So rather than do their job and make sure she wears her mask properly at night, they wanted to drug her. Also, they lost her prosthetic breast more than once, several pairs of glasses, and countless amounts of clothes and jewelry. Yet every time we would ask about these items or ask why my mom didn’t have her cane, workers (particularly Leanna Amos) would blame my mother for losing or forgetting things, which is completely ludicrous since my mother can’t be held responsible for these items hence the reason YOU as a facility are getting paid $4000 a month to care for her. Another major issue is they contract their nurses for a few days at a time, so the nurses aren’t employed by life’s journey. For this reason the nurses never get to know the patients, and this came straight from a nurses mouth. Also, most of the staff here are not CNA’s, they are “resident specialists” who have NOT had the proper training at all (and again, this information came from a nurse). The day we moved my mother out last week, one of the cna’s actually apologized to me on behalf of life’s journey and on behalf of Leanna, who was more than rude every time she blamed my mother for something and showed no bedside manner. To top it all off I found out that their DON walked out as well because of the mess that is going on. The straw that broke the camels back for us was that last week my mother swallowed finger nail polish remover, and rather than call poison control they called her doctor (who was already on a log to call back for something else and was extremely busy). Well 45 minutes after I got the call that she swallowed the remover, while I was on my way there (because I live an hour away), I called to speak to Gary (director) to see if the doctor called back. He was very flat and almost irritated, and stated that they were still waiting on a call back. I said “Well in a situation like this you should call poison control”. He simply said he’d look into it, and got off of the phone. We moved my mom out of that place that night. During that time I heard 4 stories about what supposedly happened with the finger nail polish remover, but I do know she drank it because someone finally came clean and said they saw her drink it, and that my mom was saying that her throat burned. This is a long post but it is truly just a few of many MANY incidents that happened at Life’s Journey. Please, PLEASE do not bring your loved ones here. The good news is that my mother has not had ONE “behavior” since she left! My mother is one of the lucky ones that made it out. I feel sorry for anyone that is still stuck there and their family who mistakenly (just like us) trusted these people.