Southern Wisconsin Center for the Developmentally Disabled is west of Union Grove in the Town of Dover. It opened in 1919 and became an expansive community of connected cottages and classrooms amid towering trees and pastoral setting. In 1991 buildings with red-brick foundations and cream-brick walls were placed on both the State and National Register of Historic Buildings. At its peak in 1959, SWC was home for 1,595 people. The population at SWC has been declining since the State of Wisconsin set a goal to place residents outside of the center through the Community Integration Program.

As Southern Wisconsin Center was downsizing, the State of Wisconsin began looking at using the vacant buildings in other ways. The Department of Corrections was the first to move to the site with the conversion in 1989 of Atherton Hall from former administrative offices to a minimum-security institution that readies women inmates for a return to freedom. In 1991 another portion of the building was converted to a non-prerelease section. The facility was named the Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center for Women. New construction includes a visiting room with a play area for kids, a 12-bed segregation building, and a quick-chill kitchen. Educational opportunities range from basic literacy classes to technical college and college courses. Treatment programs, cognitive intervention, life skills, and employment skills are also taught.

In 1994 the State of Wisconsin converted two cottages and the superintendent's home at Southern Wisconsin Center into Southern Oaks Girl School, with the mission to provide a safe, secure, humane, and innovative treatment and educational program designed to change the behavior of delinquent girls. Southern Oaks is the first correction institution in the nation to add participation in Girl Scouting to its regular programming. Many of the girls have been abused, and these activities help re-establish their self worth. An annex building was built in 1999.

Both Ellsworth and Southern Oaks benefit from volunteers from the community who serve as mentors and tutors, provide worship services and music, teach arts & crafts, teach life skills such as banking and budgeting, and help residents plant and harvest gardens.