Our beautifully landscaped campusmunity borders the Rock Run County Preserve – a 1,200-acre greenway with a three-mile paved loop trail offering a peaceful oasis in the midst of Joliet – a thriving urban area just southwest of Chicago. Brookdale Joliet provides both assisted living and memory care.

• Assisted Living : Our two-story assisted living community offers 100 apartments with spacious bathrooms and kitchenettes, along with several common areas for residents to relax and enjoy activities. A large, covered patio in the front of the building is furnished with rocking chairs and tables – a lovely space for residents to enjoy the out-of-doors. The back of the community overlooks the preserve.
• Memory care : Built in 2008, our memory care community is its own single-story building with 38 private and semi-private apartments. The community offers an enclosed courtyard, as well as a secure, professionally-landscaped back yard overlooking the preserve. Residents are free to wander outside – always supervised and always safe.

Both buildings are located just across the parking lot from one another. Should their health decline, residents can easily transition from assisted living to memory care – without having to leave familiar surroundings, friends and staff. In addition, our unique environment allows couples to remain on the same campus together, even if one requires assisted living and the other, memory care.

A Great Location

Brookdale Joliet is conveniently situated about 45 miles southwest of Chicago, in the heart of Joliet, the fourth largest city in Illinois. Our campus offers easy access to I-55 and to I-80 – the fastest and most direct route into the city.

Right down the street is the Westfield Shopping Center, a major mall with over 100 different stores and restaurants. Provena St. Joseph Hospital is also close – an easy five-minute drive. And many medical offices are in the neighborhood. Downtown Joliet is just to our east, where residents occasionally take in performances at the Rialto Square Theater, as well as visit the Birdhaven Greenhouse and Conservatory, local museums and historic sites. Our great location gives residents the best of both worlds; views and access to the Rock Run County Preserve, with all the conveniences of urban living close by.

A Wonderful Selection

Our assisted living community offers 100 studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. Two non-related residents can also choose our Friendship Suite option, in which they share an apartment – an affordable option for residents who may be looking for companionship and cost-savings.

All of our assisted living apartments offer:

• Kitchenette with sink and full-sized refrigerator
• Spacious wheelchair-accessible bathroom with step-in shower equipped with hand-held shower head, vanity and sink, and grab bars
• Wall-to-wall carpeting and large picture windows, some of which look out onto the preserve
• Individual temperature control in each room
• An emergency call-system that residents wear around their necks or wrists and built-in sprinkler system

Our assisted living community also offers several common areas, including a covered front-patio with rocking chairs, a special room with a pool table, a basketball hoop and a TV – perfect to get together and enjoy sporting events and to socialize. Our Country Kitchen is frequently used for small private gatherings. A private dining room is also available for residents who need a larger space to celebrate special occasions. In addition, our community has:

• Two libraries, one with computer access that residents can use like a home office.
• TV room and parlor, where residents gather to watch movies or participate in our exercise program.
• Activities room with a full kitchen – perfect for all kinds of arts and crafts, games, cooking classes and even “snactivities”. Religious services are also held here.

Our memory care community, which was built on our campus in 2008, and includes 38 private and semi-private large studio apartments. Each has two large windows – one over each bed – which gives each resident their own sense of space. The apartments overlook either the front of our professionally-landscaped building or a large enclosed garden bordering the preserve. Residents also have access to an enclosed courtyard, a paved area with wheelchair-accessible raised flower beds, large planters with flowers, rocking chairs and wrought-iron patio sets. A fence encircles the entire building, giving residents plenty of space to enjoy the out-of-doors – always with a staff escort.

The community, which is shaped like a lower case b and connected by extra-wide hallways with built-in handrails, includes an activities room decorated to look like a homey kitchen with tables and drapes – a perfect way to help trigger pleasant memories from the past. We also have a large living parlor with easy chairs, couches and a TV, another TV room in the back of the building – where residents enjoy cards, board games and movies. Memory care residents also have access to two dining rooms – one in the front of the building offering tables for four, and one in the back reserved for those residents who either wander quite a bit or require assistance with feeding. The back dining room faces the back courtyard, creating a restful, serene area – the perfect environment for our staff to ensure that residents in more advanced stages of dementia receive proper nutrition and hydration.

Strong, Caring Relationships

Should assisted living or memory care residents require physical or occupational therapy, we offer the full range of outpatient therapy services, right here on site. Our rehabilitation partner – Angels at Home Health and Physical Therapy – rents space here in our assisted living community, where they have a fully-equipped therapy gym. They can also provide “home health” therapy in the convenience of the resident’s apartment. Outpatient therapy is offered five days a week with home health offered three days a week.

Of course, residents are also welcome to use any therapist they prefer – and those providers are always welcome to work with residents in their apartments or take full advantage of our hallways and common areas.

A variety of other healthcare providers make occasional “house calls,” including a podiatrist who is here once a month, an optometrist and dentist as needed, and an audiologist that performs on-site hearing screenings. We can also bring in psychologists and social workers as needed through local home health agencies. And we work closely with several hospice agencies in the area, which are fully prepared to bring in adaptive equipment as needed.

We also have a wheelchair-accessible bus available to take residents to their medical appointments.

Our Staff

Many of the same staff members who joined our community have been with us for many years. Our longevity can be attributed to one simple reason. From our Executive Director and Community Relations Director, to our nurses, Resident Assistants and housekeeping staff, we feel a special devotion to our residents. When you work so closely with people – caring for them, helping them in difficult times and sharing joyful times – a strong bond forms. Our residents are our friends – and their families, members of our family. Joliet may be a large town, but it has a small-town feel. The majority of our staff live right in the immediate area. They see our residents’ families out and about, in stores and at church. That strong sense of belonging and connection to our residents permeates our community. It comes through loud and clear in the commitment our staff feels for residents – and in the love our residents feel for their caregivers.

Our staff members are not only compassionate and caring, but they are also highly trained in all aspects of senior care – how to properly transfer frail elderly, how to encourage good eating habits, how to property assist residents in bathing or dressing; as examples.

In addition, our memory care staff undergoes extensive training through the Brookdale Silver Chair program, which covers all kinds of topics related to caring for seniors with memory impairments. They also receive training to help them gain insights into Alzheimer’s and other memory impairments – both from the resident’s and the family’s perspective.