This is a problem of society, not a problem of individuals.

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• This editorial by Lucas Grundmeier represents the views of the Register’s editorial board.

No single moment put the Beaman family on a path to separation, squalor and legal trouble. No isolated choice by a family member, or an institution, set up the sobering circumstances that the Register’s Lee Rood and Cody Scanlan exhaustively detailed in a series of reports.

What’s happened to the Beamans is the result of cascading failures, especially in local and state government.

Iowans should not tolerate it.

The Beamans, who have a myriad of mental, physical and intellectual issues, have always faced struggles, but they should have had more help. Iowans are rightly proud that Iowans help Iowans. In the Beamans’ case, there was too little help until it was too late.

It should be nonnegotiable that social services and healthcare agencies have sufficient personnel and other resources to help ― to at least prevent a family from falling through cracks so severely that only the criminal justice system is left to try to pick up pieces.

Hear how Sarah Beaman’s time in group homes would lead to jail

Hear from Sarah Beaman as she recounts her time away from her family in group homes and how she would end up in jail.

Todd and Bonnie Beaman have four adult children. Bonnie and the children have intellectual disabilities, and Todd’s IQ is only slightly above that threshold. The family scraped by for years with Social Security disability income and community-based services provided through Medicaid. The services became less consistent over the years after a managed care organization took over the Medicaid services from state workers in 2016. In 2025, two houses tied to the family, in Menlo and Audubon, were found in appalling condition, including sewage on a basement floor. Criminal cases are pending against three members of the family, and 33-year-old Sarah has been separated from her parents and siblings for almost a year while state workers seek a placement suitable for her needs.

“In Iowa, finding a permanent home with skilled caregivers for anyone with her level of need as proved incredibly difficult, if not impossible, as providers, bed space and Medicaid coverage for such services has dwindled,” Rood wrote. Her reporting also revealed that the number of dependent adult abuse reports in Iowa increased by 50% from 2021 to 2025, and that deaths tied to such abuse went from 18 in 2022 to 31 in 2025.

One important reminder from the Beamans’ story is that the federal-state Medicaid does so much beyond the political flashpoint of assisting lower-income Americans with health insurance and medical costs. Far afield from debates about work requirements, income thresholds and fraud dangers is the reality that tens of thousands of Iowans, and millions of other Americans, are so severely disabled that government-sponsored care is their only chance to survive. This is the sort of spending that members of Congress say they want to protect by cracking down on waste and fraud. But it is hard to imagine care improving as Medicaid spending is reduced by close to $1 trillion over 10 years under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

More: Privatized Medicaid in Iowa delivers on none of its promises | Opinion

The family’s troubles also echo the door-slamming issues that hundreds of Iowa families have described in the 10-plus years since private companies took over administering health coverage for Medicaid recipients in Iowa. “They either said funds are too limited or they didn’t have anyone who could handle” Sarah’s heath issues, Bonnie told Rood.

The situation deteriorated. One of Todd and Bonnie’s daughters, Charlie, married a man, Joshua Walker, in 2024 who she alleges has committed domestic abuse. Walker walked into a police station one day and admitted he’d violated his parole, but a police officer did not arrest him, the officer said, because he looked and smelled so bad.

Pause on that moment. He was not arrested because he was in such poor shape. The result, according to the Register reporting, was further abuse and further deterioration. We, as a society, turned off the levers of help because they were needed so desperately.

Detaining Walker could have helped the Beaman family. The criminal cases against the family members seem more like, in part, punishment for the rest of our failures. Investigators and prosecutors surely can identify mistakes the Beaman elders have made. But incarceration and other penalties are not the key answer we should reach on the question of the Beamans.

Avoiding these kinds of tragedies for other families will always be difficult, especially if no help comes from Washington. But the Beamans’ case should serve as a rallying cry. The state ombudsman office should examine why the Beamans were left to flounder. Leadership at the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, in flux after Senate Democrats voted down the confirmation of former director Larry Johnson, should make sure other families do not suffer as the Beamans did. Local and state law enforcement must continue its work to train officers to handle people who have mental health issues. And we, as Iowans, should re-examine how Iowans can help Iowans anew.

This is a problem of society, not a problem of individuals. Iowans understand the unique level of difficulty that caring for severely disabled people entails. They understand that case workers and other state employees must make difficult judgments about when families can no longer be kept together, or when autonomy is no longer possible. They know that state workers cannot conjure trained and dedicated care workers from thin air.

Yes, solutions will cost money. Local, state and federal taxpayer money. And that funding is in short supply at every level. But Iowans helping Iowans has long been our ethos. We should have been more helpful to the Beamans. We must be more helpful to other Iowans like them.

Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Rachel Stassen-Berger, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.