Home » Protection agency finds Jenkins rest home unclean, abusive and neglectful

Protection agency finds Jenkins rest home unclean, abusive and neglectful

Golden Years Rest Home in Jenkins, Ky.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Aug. 14, 2012) — Kentucky Protection & Advocacy, a client -directed legal rights protection agency that promotes the rights of individuals with disabilities, today released an investigative report of Golden Years Rest Home in Jenkins, Ky.

The report provides an example of how a personal care home in Kentucky failed to protect and adequately meet the needs of citizens with mental health diagnoses and with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Observations about the response of the system responsible for providing oversight of licensed PCHs in Kentucky are also included in the report.

“The 21-page report concludes that the closure of Golden Years Rest Home does not address or change Kentucky’s current service system, which does not effectively and appropriately support persons with mental illness,” said Marsha Hockensmith, Director, Kentucky P&A.

Also included in the report are first-hand accounts from four individuals who previously lived at Golden Years Rest Home. William Gramps, a former resident at Golden Years Rest Home, said “I felt I was between a rock and a hard place because Chum took my money, and I couldn’t get any money to leave.”

The reported concluded that problems, including abuse and neglect, and rights violations at the facility, had been reported to and documented by regulatory and investigatory agencies since 2009. Little had been done to address or correct these issues. Residents living at Golden Years made multiple allegations of resident-to-resident sexual abuse, rights violations, financial exploitation and staff-to-resident verbal abuse.

Reports also were received and reported from both staff and residents regarding regulatory violations because of inadequacies in staffing, staff training, food, basic hygiene products, cleaning supplies, linens, as well as resident activities, services and privacy.

Simple tasks such as supplying the facility with toilet paper were on-going problems at the home. Until the Office of the Inspector General cited the facility for not having enough linens, residents had to share the same towel to bathe. The facility regularly ran out of bread and milk. Residents stated their daily activities consisted of sleeping, watching TV and walking around the building. They were not allowed, regardless of guardianship status, to leave the premises. Many of the residents did not have a guardian.

“As alarming as the living conditions and numerous rights violations of residents found at GYRH, P&A also found the response of the system responsible for providing oversight of licensed PCHs equally alarming,” the report says.

Four Type A Citations, as well as multiple Statements of Deficiencies, were issued by the OIG since 2009, yet acceptable plans of correction were never submitted to the OIG. Allegations of abuse and neglect were unsubstantiated by the Department for Community-Based Services because resident witnesses were discounted because of their mental health diagnoses.

 

 

i

 

 

 

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT.