Quakerdale changes

NEW PROVIDENCE – The traditional orphan’s home is no longer a model the state of Iowa wants to support.

That’s how superintendent Rob Talbot announced that Quakerdale’s network of ‘residential treatment centers’ around Iowa are closing down.

It should be emphasized, that does not mean Quakerdale is closing. It doesn’t even represent a big change in service offerings of recent years.

But, residential treatment had been a last vestige of the orphanage, a system where youngsters live on a campus and essentially work their way through teen years and toward adulthood.

Closing residential treatment in New Providence, and most recently in Waterloo, doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done with kids, just that it will be done under other models, with maybe stingier state reimbursement. (Read it all in the Tuesday Ledger)