Scandal-riddled Glenwood Resource Center closes next month. What happens to its residents?

Twenty-eight residents still remaining at the troubled Glenwood Resource Center will be moved out by the end of June, signaling the state is near the end of its two-year plan to permanently shutter the scandal-riddled facility.

In addition, the 235 staff members still working at the facility will be laid off by the official closure date, according to a notice on Iowa's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, website.

The southwest Iowa center is one of two state-run institutions that provide residential care for people with severe intellectual or developmental disabilities. In 2022, state officials announced the plan to close the facility before the end of 2024.

According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, the state agency that oversees Glenwood, the closure will officially take place "by or before June 30." By that date, the over two dozen remaining residents will be moved to new settings for continued care.

"All of the individuals still living at Glenwood have identified placement, as well as back-up options for placement. Transitions are occurring nearly daily at this time," Iowa HHS spokesperson Alex Murphy told the Register.

The closure ends a controversial chapter in Glenwood's history. The announcement had come just months after a series of scandals at the facility that ultimately led to the ouster of top state officials and an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation into allegations of wrongdoing.

But the shuttering of this large state institution continues to raise concerns among some advocates, who have said services provided to residents at Glenwood may not be sufficiently replaced by other community services.

"I think there are people that have moved out that are living their best life, and I think there's other people that have moved out that it hasn't worked out very well for," said Kathy King, a former administrator at Glenwood and guardian of two residents at the facility.

State's decision to close Glenwood came after scandals

Glenwood Resource Center has a sprawling 380-acre campus near Iowa's western border and can trace its history back to the Civil War. In recent years, the facility has provided care to Iowa adults with intellectual and physical disabilities, including those with severe autism or brain injuries. Many are also medically fragile.

Most of Glenwood's residents had lived at the facility for several years; some even for decades.

Glenwood, which has an annual budget of more than $78 million, had been embroiled in controversy for years leading up to the state's announcement of its closure.

In 2019, the Des Moines Register reported allegations from frontline medical staff that blamed inadequate medical care for a spike in deaths among its fragile residents. The then-director of Iowa's human services agency, Jerry Foxhoven, denied there was a problem. He, along with Glenwood's superintendent and medical director, were later ousted.

In addition, former managers at the facility also accused the facility's ex-superintendent, Jerry Rea, of organizing unethical "sexual arousal" research on residents.

The U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into allegations of poor care and unethical research on residents, and found that the state had violated the constitutional rights of Glenwood residents.

Federal officials determined the state had exposed residents to unreasonable harm by denying them sufficient care and exposing them to unethical experimentation.

The state and the DOJ reached a settlement in December 2022. As part of that agreement, federal officials have continued to monitor the state's handling of the Glenwood closure as well as the care of residents at Woodward Resource Center, Iowa's similar state-run institution in central Iowa, which remains open.

Have former Glenwood residents found sufficient care elsewhere?

At the time of the closure announcement in April 2022, the facility was home to 152 Iowa adults with intellectual and physical disabilities.

Over the past two years, some of those residents were transferred to Woodward Resource Center, state officials say.

However, most have been moved to community-based settings, such as residential facilities for those with intellectual disabilities or to host homes. Others have been moved into nursing facilities or into hospice care, Murphy said.

Murphy noted that the remaining 28 residents could be moved out days or even weeks before June 30. However, those dates will continually shift up until that date, though state officials do hope to have all residents moved prior to June 30, he said.

"Our current focus at Glenwood is on client care and managing transitions," Murphy said.

King is the guardian for two Glenwood residents who will soon move to other placements. One is moving into a host home, and the other will be placed in a residential facility in Council Bluffs.

Since her retirement from Glenwood six years ago, King has publicly criticized the care and unethical treatment of the facility's residents. She is also one of the former employees suing the state after they allegedly faced retaliation for blowing the whistle on Glenwood leadership for conducting unethical experiments on residents.

King said while some residents have adapted well to their new placements, others have not coped as well since leaving Glenwood. Many of the facility's frontline medical staff had worked there for several years and were very knowledgeable about patients' care needs — a major benefit to Glenwood residents.

“All of that changes when you leave someplace you’ve lived for the majority of your life," she said.

King said she believes the state rushed the Glenwood closure with its two-year timeline, saying that effort should have been done over five to 10 years to ensure all residents find appropriate placement. She also said the short timeline created anxiety for families, who were concerned their loved one "would end up on the street."

“When the closure was announced, families were just going to take whatever they could get just so their person had somewhere to live,” King said.

“They’re afraid of what will happen if they complain. I think a lot of them just moved their loved ones to move them so that they had somewhere to live, and not necessarily that they were moving into the right facility or that all the services were going to be provided."

Closure-related work at Glenwood will take place after July 1, state says

Glenwood is authorized to employ 716 full-time workers, state officials previously said, making the facility a major employer in the city of Glenwood, a small southwest Iowa town of about 5,000 residents that's near the state's western border. In April 2022, Glenwood had nearly 470 workers.

State officials had previously pointed to Iowa's challenges in its ability to recruit and retain staff in rural southwest Iowa as a partial reason for the closure, particularly after federal officials demanded that services improve.

The remaining 235 staff members at Glenwood are continuing to provide residential care and other basic operations until the closure takes place, Murphy said. Some closure-related activities are also taking place, such as inventory and record retention.

After July 1, HHS officials say the focus will shift to remaining closure-related work, including equipment inventory and redistribution, record retention and asset management, among other operations, Murphy said.

Some staff have accepted other state positions, said Murphy, who didn't provide an exact total.

"We are incredibly grateful to the team that are staying on with us until the facility closes," Murphy said. "Their commitment to HHS and the individuals living at Glenwood is to be commended."

Michaela Ramm covers health care for the Des Moines Register. She can be reached at mramm@registermedia.com, at (319) 339-7354 or on Twitter at @Michaela_Ramm.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Iowa's controversial Glenwood institute will officially close in June