Overall sentiment about Goodlife Senior Living and Memory Care Amarillo is highly mixed, with a clear split between families who experienced attentive, compassionate, small-home care and families who reported serious lapses in safety, dementia care, management, and billing. Multiple reviewers highlight a warm, home-like environment with a small resident population (often cited as about 15 residents), which in many cases enabled a high staff-to-resident ratio, individualized attention, and staff who go above and beyond (staying late or coming in on days off). Administrator Mackenzie receives repeated praise for dedication and leadership in several positive accounts, and a number of reviewers specifically call out exceptional end-of-life comfort and hospice support as strengths.
Care quality is the most polarizing theme. Positive reviews describe loving, patient-centered caregiving, dignity restoration, quick response from staff and management when issues arise, and a measurable improvement in residents' conditions after placement. Families often compliment the housekeeping, laundry, medication management, and the overall cleanliness and lack of odors. The open-concept dining/living area, spacious private rooms, and home-cooked meals (with mentions of fresh vegetables and meat) are noted repeatedly as meaningful positives. Amenities such as on-site hairdressers, exercise classes, parades, ice cream socials, and birthday celebrations appear in several accounts and contribute to the small-community, social atmosphere some families value.
Counterbalancing those positives are repeated, serious concerns that suggest inconsistent operations and uneven staff competency. A number of reviews allege neglect and verbal abuse, including reports that residents were left unclean or skipped for meals, and one extreme account claiming a resident died after being left in soiled conditions. Several reviewers expressed alarm at dementia/memory-care handling: reports include failing to de-escalate behaviors, disputed physical incident allegations, rapid discharge of a memory-care resident (within hours), and safety incidents involving police. These accounts point to possible gaps in staff training, inadequate protocols for behavioral health, and inconsistent enforcement of safety standards.
Management and communication issues appear frequently. While some families praise proactive management and an awesome director, others describe unstable leadership, frequent director turnover, and a perception that administration is money-focused rather than resident-focused. Inter-shift communication problems and difficulty building relationships with staff because of high turnover are recurrent themes. Billing disputes and alleged overcharging for very short stays were raised in multiple reviews, compounding families' distrust in certain cases.
Dining and activities produce mixed feedback. Many reviewers praise the home-cooked meals, caring cook, and nutritious portions; several explicitly state they have no complaints about food. Conversely, some characterize the food as poor cafeteria-style fare, cold or small portions, or “trash.” Activity programming is similarly inconsistent: some families appreciate parades, socials, and regular engagement opportunities, while others report a lack of structured activities and long periods where residents simply sit and watch TV. Facility maintenance is generally described as clean and well-kept, but isolated complaints (e.g., a broken dishwasher, a house described as a “dump” in one account) indicate uneven upkeep between different areas or houses.
A pattern emerges of two contrasting experiences that often depend on the specific staff on duty, which house the resident is in, or the manager leading at the time. Several reviews mention there are two houses and that quality can differ markedly between them. Named personnel appear in both praise and criticism: Administrator Mackenzie is a recurring positive, while individuals like an RN Karla and a staff member named Kendra are associated with negative incidents in other reports. This suggests that resident experience may hinge heavily on particular caregivers and leadership at any given time.
Recommendations based on these reviews should be cautious and individualized. For families seeking a small, home-like memory or assisted living community with potential for very personalized, compassionate care, Goodlife Amarillo has many genuine advocates and demonstrable strengths (cleanliness, private rooms, home-cooked meals, staff who go the extra mile). However, families whose loved ones require robust, reliably consistent memory-care protocols or who cannot tolerate risk of understaffing, miscommunication, or unstable management should exercise caution: ask specific questions about dementia training, incident protocols, staff turnover rates, billing practices, and observe multiple shifts and both houses if possible. Verify references, request documentation of staff credentials and incident resolution, and consider a trial period with clear billing and discharge policies to mitigate the inconsistent experiences reflected in these reviews.
