Communication Is Key For New Chief

By Elizabeth Ahlin
Omaha World-Herald Staff Writer
November 22, 2009

GLENWOOD, Iowa — R. Scot Booth is a bearded former baseball pitcher with a New York accent — but those aren’t the only reasons he stands out on the campus of the Glenwood Resource Center.

As the facility’s new superintendent, Booth is charged with continuing to increase the quality of care given to the center’s more than 300 residents with developmental disabilities.

It’s an important job, both for the residents and the Glenwood community.

Legislative leaders have indicated that next year they will consider whether the Glenwood center or its sister facility in Woodward should be closed. Booth’s level of success with the staff likely will play a role in that decision.

Booth began his job four weeks ago, taking the reins from interim superintendent Kelly Brodie.

He formerly was the executive director of the Los Lunas Community Program, a New Mexico group that helped 120 people with behavioral and medical needs. Before that, he was a longtime consultant with the Columbus Organization, which helps state-run facilities meet federal care standards.

Booth is no stranger to the U.S. Department of Justice. In his 35 years of work, he said, he’s spent only two months working at a facility that wasn’t under supervision by the federal government.

Booth’s hiring, at a salary of $117,000 a year, follows a long string of problems at the resource center.

In 1999, the federal government began investigating accusations of civil rights violations at the facility. In 2004, the government and center officials reached an agreement allowing the facility to stay open provided it met minimum standards of care.

Four years later, Glenwood still hadn’t done so, drawing fire from critics. In 2008, 12 residents died, and the facility was fined $50,000.

With that record, it wouldn’t surprise some that Booth has compared the Glenwood facility to the Titanic.

He did so not because he believes the center is a disaster, but because the enormous ship was incapable of making quick turns.

“These things don’t happen overnight,” said Booth, urging critics of the facility to have patience.

By most accounts, Glenwood has made strides.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in its most recent report, said the facility had made progress in training staffers to handle the nutritional needs of all residents, many of whom have severe swallowing disorders and need help to eat.

Booth said that system is impressive. Every individual resident has a nutrition plan, and every staff person has received training on eating needs.

The facility now has a “consumer review” every morning at 8 a.m., where staff members can make supervisors aware of any problems and discuss them.

The Justice Department also criticized the center, saying it was still experiencing communication breakdowns among staff members.

In one incident, a resident had not been given his medication one night, and was dead the next day. In another incident, nursing staff failed to notify a doctor immediately about a resident’s change in condition. That resident also died. Neither death was tied to those errors.

One of Booth’s primary goals is increasing training and supervision by improving communication among employees.

Booth understands the concerns of advocates for people with developmental disabilities, but the only way to fix the facility is with hard work, training and time.

He said he is an advocate, too, and his passion comes from a very personal experience.

His grandmother was in a nursing home in New York City, where he worked as evening administrator.

Booth discovered that she had an open wound on her arm, a dish of cold food and that she was lying in her own filth. It took him 30 minutes to find someone to address the problems.

The nursing home was closed soon after.

That’s the fate that Sylvia Piper wants for the Glenwood Resource Center.

Piper, executive director of Iowa Protection and Advocacy Services, has called for closing the center and said recent strides haven’t changed her mind.

When Booth’s hiring was announced in October, she reiterated her desire to see the center closed. The advocacy group recommended that it be done over a 30-month period, and that residents start being moved into the community.

Booth has experience closing resource centers. He worked at the Willowbrook State School in New York when, initially, most of its residents moved into the community, and later when it was closed. As a longtime consultant with other resource centers, he’s also been involved with closing facilities in other states.

But that’s not his job in Iowa.

“I’ve been given no direction by my bosses to close the resource center,” Booth said.

Rather, he said, he’s been tasked with helping 12 residents each year make the transition into the community, and to create a safe care center for the remaining residents.

In the four weeks he’s been in Glenwood, six residents have already been moved into community living. It takes a well-thought-out plan for each individual, and that requires time, Booth said.

“Not everybody can get out there that fast; not everybody can live out there that quickly,” Booth said.

“You need ability in the state to have resource centers so they’re not living in a shelter or on the street or by themselves. You have to find the right places for everyone.”

Contact the writer: 444-1310, elizabeth.ahlin@owh.com
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