Anamosa's Fairview Care Center to close Feb. 1

Staff at Jones County's only residential care facility for those with mental illness and developmental disabilities are working to place its residents before it closes Feb. 1.

"It's a big loss for us, in terms of our staff that's there and in terms of the community," said William Bonnes, president and CEO of Community Care Inc., the DeWitt-based non-profit that owns Fairview Care Center in Anamosa.

Bonnes said Community Care is closing Fairview, opened just three years ago, due to fewer referrals and declining state payments for residential services. He said about 10 of the facility's 21 residents have already found new homes in smaller neighborhood group homes, closely supervised apartments, or other settings.

Community Care moved into the former Jones Regional Medical Center in October 2009 after the hospital moved to a new building on Anamosa's eastern edge. Community Care spent about $1 million to convert the hospital to a long-term care facility that could house up to 36 residents, Bonnes said.

Before Fairview, Community Care provided the services at Edinburgh Manor about 11 miles northwest of Anamosa. That deteriorating building, the former "county home" built about 1900, was closed and sold.

"We invested $1 million in the (Fairview) facility and now we're still paying the mortgage," Bonnes said.

Like the Abbe Center for Community Care in Linn County, Fairview provides 24-hour supervision for its residents. Medicaid covers much of the cost of those patients' care, and the federal government's preference for small-group homes leaves counties and states to fund most of the costs of residential facilities.

"That's the direction of the state," Bonnes said. "Unfortunately, some of these folks need 24-hour, seven-day-a-week care."

Bonnes said Community Care found it difficult to staff Fairview, where most jobs pay $8 to $9 an hour.

Community Care continues to provide residential mental health services in six Eastern Iowa counties.

Three men placed at Fairview under court order were charged with sexually assaulting another resident there in 2011.

Two of the men  received jail time, the third probation.