An assisted-living company recently fired one of its top administrators after a resident death in Iowa resulted in a care facility being cited for numerous violations and its license being downgraded to conditional status.
State records indicate Natasha Kanealy, 39, began working for Jaybird Senior Living, also known as JSL Workforce Solutions, in July 2017, most recently as the company’s full-time regional director of clinical operations.
In 2025, the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing inspectors visited one of the company’s facilities, the Parker Place Retirement Community, which is an assisted living center in Parkersburg. DIAL ordered Parker Place to stop accepting new patients, while also placing the facility’s license on conditional status. Parker Place was one of the businesses over which Kanealy had oversight responsibilities, according to state workforce records.
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In August 2026, DIAL inspectors investigated another of the company’s businesses, Lawton Senior Living, an assisted living center in Woodbury County, and issued a report citing the facility for 31 regulatory violations.
Inspectors said the Lawton home’s “management company failed to provide adequate oversight and operational direction to maintain a safe, healthy environment and ensure consistent service delivery to tenants at Lawton Senior Living.” The inspectors described what they called “systemic breakdowns” in operations, resulting in unsanitary living conditions, a lack of completed background checks on staff, a failure to respond to “significant” medical events, and also noted “chronic staffing shortages” that had left the home’s memory care unit understaffed.
Caregiver of resident who died was 16 years old
The inspectors reported that an 88-year-old female resident of the home was taken to a hospital emergency room by ambulance on April 6, 2026, and was diagnosed with multiple wounds, including bruises and skin tears on her arms, legs and face, as well as multiple fractured ribs and a broken hip. The woman died two weeks later, with medical records showing evidence of blunt force trauma with head and neck contusions.
A subsequent investigation indicated that a 16-year-old universal worker at the home had been working alone in the dementia-care unit with woman and nine other residents, during an evening shift when the woman’s injuries were most likely sustained. The teenager allegedly told inspectors he saw the woman fall to the floor and that although she was not making sounds or speaking after the incident, he had put her to bed without informing a nurse or documenting the alleged fall.
According to the DIAL inspectors, some of the staff later concluded the injuries most likely were caused not by a fall but by an employee of the home. Inspectors say the state medical examiner said he could not determine the cause of death but that the injuries to the woman’s left side suggested they were not the result of her falling on her right side as had been reported.
According to state inspection reports, the 16-year-old employee was fired the day the injured woman was taken to the hospital. The youth allegedly told inspectors he had completed all his training at the home on a computer, was given no hands-on training, and had not worked with a nurse on his skills. He also alleged he had been given no specific training on emergency situations, the individual residents, or the residents’ care plans.
In addition, inspectors reported, records showed the youth and two other employees had administered medications to residents without having completed the required, DIAL-approved course on medication management.
As a 16-year-old employee, inspectors reported, the youth was not “old enough to pass medication,” regardless of training. In Iowa, individuals as young as 16 can work in health-care settings such as assisted living centers and can also become certified nursing assistants.
According to state records, one employee of the Lawton home told inspectors the 16-year-old universal worker had been tasked with training him to work in the memory care unit, but that the teenager then told him he didn’t like training his co-workers and did not like people.
Previous deaths at Jaybird-managed homes
State inspectors said they reviewed 15 employee files and found that in five of the 15 cases, the home had not completed the mandatory background checks on those individuals before putting them to work in the home.
After citing Lawton Senior Living for 31 regulatory violations, DIAL fined the facility $13,500. Because Jaybird Senior Living didn’t appeal the fine, DIAL then reduced the penalty 35% to $8,775.
State workforce records indicate that on Aug. 17, 2026, Jaybird Senior Living fired Kanealy for allegedly failing to meet the “essential leadership, clinical oversight, regulatory compliance, and accountability responsibilities” of the job. Kanealy then applied for unemployment benefits, which led to a Sept. 29, 2026, hearing before Administrative Law Judge Daniel Zeno.
In a recent decision, Zeno ruled that Kanealy was entitled to collect unemployment benefits, finding that she had “attempted to perform the job to the best of her ability.” Kanealy’s inability to meet her employer’s work expectations did not establish the sort of job-related misconduct that would disqualify her from collecting benefits, Zeno stated in his ruling.
“The employer did what was in its best interest and ended Ms. Kanealy’s employment, but the employer has not established disqualifying, job-related misconduct,” Zeno ruled.
Jaybird Senior Living is headquartered in Cedar Rapids and manages 17 care facilities in Iowa, as well as 28 facilities in 10 other states. Jaybird manages Bondurant’s Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing, the assisted living facility where 77-year-old Lynne Stewart froze to death in January 2022. Jaybird is also the former manager of Keelson Harbour Senior Living, an assisted living center in Spirit Lake where 95-year-old Elaine Creasey froze to death in December 2021.
No criminal charges were filed in the Keelson Harbour death, but in the Courtyard Estates case, a caregiver was charged with second-degree murder before prosecutors agreed to a plea deal that resulted in the murder charge being downgraded to misdemeanor dependent adult abuse.
