Despite Rules, Restraint and Seclusion Problem Persists in Iowa Schools

In 2008, new regulations took effect in the state of Iowa limiting the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. The regulations determine how and under what circumstances students can be restrained, how long a student can be locked up into a time-out room, and specifically state that seclusion and restraint cannot be used as punishment. Despite these rules, teachers in three school districts have used restraint or seclusion inappropriately. In one case, a student was strapped to a chair because his aides were absent. In another case, someone was physically punished for disruptive behavior.

Disability advocates call for better training of school personnel. Parents want to know the rules, too, so that they can stand up for their children. I agree to both of these, but I also think an attitutde shift is needed, from repression of undesired behavior to individualized intervention. It is shocking, to me, that apparently belting a student to a chair is seen as an appropriate substitute for two aides. Even in unforeseen circumstances – I will assume this was a one-time incident -, this is unacceptable.

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Autistic Student Denied Education, Loses Court Battle

Recently, an autistic man in the UK lost a court case over his lack of education when he was rtwelve. During that time, his former school could not deal with his behavior problems. They expelled him, and left him without education for eighteen months before another school was found that would take him. Now, A., as he is referred to in court, claimed damages, but the case cannot go to full trial. The organization representing the man is considering going to the European Court of Human Rights.

This is sad. What is sadder, is that quite a number of students with disabilities are left without education for reasons similar to A.’s. School distritcts excuse lack of education by the argument that they don’t have the resources to educate “difficult” students. Even in countries like the Netherlands, where school attendance is compulsory – I don’t know about the UK -, students are left behind to sit at home.

An educational system should be focused on educating students. When the resources are not available, these should be sought. Children have the rirhg tot education. I see no reason why this should not go for the most “difficult” students.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure schools will always be able to find loopholes in the system. In the Netherlands, we have a number of “dustbin” schools which take the unwanted but fail to educate them. If the “dustbin” schools don’t want you, you can just be refused entry to the classroom. It is rather enraging how sometimes the most vulnerable students are denied an education they most definitely need. Makes me wonder, for once, how economically feasible this is.

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Seclusion Again and the Need for Individualized Educational Planning

On Twitter, I saw a tiny news clipping about an autistic child pulled out of a New Brunswick school. I didn’t pay much attention even though I was curious why a child being pulled out of school would make the news. Now, Harold L. Doherty of Facing Autism in New Brunswick comments on the story. As I already feared, the child, Jean-Michel, was removed from school because of having been secluded there.

As I have said a million times by now already, seclusion should not be used unless a child poses an immediate, physical threat to themself or someone else and absolutely no alternative can be used. It is not mentioned whether Jean-Michel posed such a threat, but it is likely that he didn’t. Meltdowns can be disturbing, but they don’t need to involve physical aggressiveness. More likely, Jean-Michel was thought to be distressing to the class with his fits.

Jean-Michel himself makes an important point, when he says that you don’t go to an isolation room, you go to the office. Had he not been autistic, that is where he would’ve been sent for disturbing the class, and rightfully so. Why is it that different punishments are used when a disabled child is concerned?

Besides, even if this behavior was so disturbed that a regular office detention would not be an option, have alternative solutions been explored. We do not know this. All we know is that the parents agreed to the seclusion. It is quite possible that no proper educational and behavioral plan was in place, individualized to meet Jean-Michel’s needs.

Harold Doherty goes on to discuss the possibility that some children with disabilities should not be in integrated classrooms. I have mixed thoughts here. On the one hand, special edcuation is not inherently and principly wrong, provided children are given a quality education in line with their needs. Special education as a dustbin for undesirable children, however, is not acceptable. Neither is the currently inevitable connection between special ed and poor academics. This child has Asperger’s Syndrome, which most likely means his academic skills are at or near grade level. If he were pushed into special ed as an alternative for the isolation room or the presumably unsuitable regular classroom, it should’ve been made sure that he got a quality education there.

I don’t have a particular preference of where children with disabilities are educated. Both inclusive and segregated classrooms – provided children are given the opportunity to interact with non-disabled peers – have their advantages. However, it is key that children with disabilities are at all times provided with a quality education in a safe, non-abusive environment.

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$5 Million Settlement in Abuse of Autistic Students

In a federal lawsuit concerning an abusive former special education teacher in Pennsylvania, a $5 million settlement has been reached. Seven autistic children were badly abused by their teacher, Susan Wzorek, between 2001 and 2003. The abuse included hitting, pulling hair, and duct taping children onto chairs.

What I find most alarming about this story, is that Ms. Wzorek’s abusive behavior is once again excused by the fact that she allegedly didn’t receive proper training, guidance and support. It doesn’t even matter, but is interestingly ironic, that she worked with disabled children for decades. Regardless, she should know that hitting a child or pulling their hair is abuse. It doesn’t require formal training on how to handle autistic children to know that. If this case had not been about disabled students, the teacher’s “proper training” would not have been an issue; it is expected to be common sense that in no circumstances do you slap a child across the face or duct tape them to a chair.

In fact, I wasn’t able to make out from the article whether criminal charges have been pressed, and, if so, how they came out. It is said that Wzorek spent six weeks in prison in 2005. If that is the jail time one can negotiate oneself into for such grave abuses, I have to nuance my opinion that the United States Justice system sentences too harshly. I might hope that in the Netherlands you wouldn’t get away with this.

Nonetheless, I am glad Ms. Wzorek had her teaching license revoked and that the children are being compensated monetarily. Too bad that money will not heal their undoubtedly severe emotional wounds.

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Autistic Teen Charged with Assault, Disorderly Conduct

Via Terri over at Barriers, Brigdes and Books comes news that an autistic teen was charged with assault and disorderly conduct a few weeks ago, after he became physically aggressive when there were four fire drills in one morning at his school. We do not know whether an appropriate behavior intervention plan was in place, as should have been the case. As Terri comments:

I don’t know the reason the charges haven’t been dropped, but I fear it’s for the old familiar reasons: that there are people who think that people who hit people get charged… and things like ‘he just has to learn…’ etc. I imagine some folks saying, as someone often does, the community/school/whomever is not equipped to deal with these situations.

The answer to not being equipped is becoming equipped, of course.

Terri believes a court date has been set for this Tuesday, April 27.

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House Approves Bill Limiting Restraint and Seclusion in Schools

Good news: according to an article in the Washington Post, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act. I wrote about the bill last December. I’m hoping for this bill to pass the Senate, too, because non-emergency and dangerous restraint and seclusion really needs to stop.

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Boy Charged with Assault for Fighting Back to Restraint

I just found out about a case of an autistic boy charged with assault for fighting back when teachers tried to restrain him. You may consider it logical that someone who presumably exhibits physical aggression, would be charged with assault, except if you’re in a legal system like mine, where the boy’s age (11) would make it impossible for him to be prosecuted. However, the situation is of course more complex than a neurotypical person assaulting someone in an unprovoked attack, most of all because this aggression was not unprovoked. The use of restraint is currently not regulated, but would be considered unwarranted in this case if the currently introduced law preventing harmful restraint and seclusion in school is implemented. Furthermore, it is already unlawful that the boy’s school consistently failed to implement behavior improvement plans and modify his IEP to deal with Zakh’s challenging behaviors, despite numerous requests from family. If you can and want to take action on this case, please follow the instructions on the ASAN action alert.

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Prevent Harmful Seclusion and Restraint in Schools

Yesterday, I was sent several E-mails alerting me to the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act, that is being introduced in the U.S. congress. I was too overloaded to look up the text of the proposed bill, and even today when I thought I’d found it through this NPR blog post, it turned out to be an inaccessible PDF format. So, before I proceed, apologies if I get any information about this proposed legislation wrong.

The bill was inspired by several cases of death or serious injury to children secluded or restrained in schools, sometimes in entirely unsafe ways (eg. strapping a child to a chair). While disability rights groups are calling for the complete abolishment of restraint and seclusion in schools – and honestly speaking, I support them -, groups representing educators say that these measures are necessary for safety reasons. I wonder what “safety” means to them. Current practice indicates “not listening” is viewed as a legitimate reason for seclusion, but I wouldn’t believe anyone considers this a safety issue. The law would restrict it to immediate danger to the student themself or someone else, but even that seemingly strict wording, leaves a lot of room for interpretation. In the Netherlands, for example, a risk to other people’s psychological wellbeing, is a legitimate reason for seclusion or restraint. In other words, if someone becomes scared from another person’s meltdown, even if that meltdown doesn’t involve physical aggression, it is still danger. That is how I was found eligible for time-out. Also, if the person’s behavior might elicit another person’s aggression, this is also danger, warranting seclusion for the prospective victim, mind you. If the law restricts restraint and seclusion to immediate danger, I hope they mean an immediate threat to the student’s own or someone else’s physical safety.

Another controversial aspect in the proposed legislation, of course, involves the “last resort” wording. When a teacher is dealing with a class full of disruptive students, and the school is providing inappropriate educational support (just because a student has an IEP or behavior intervention plan, doesn’t mean it’ll be followed), it is easy for the teacher to decide that the most disruptive student warrants restraint or seclusion as a “last resort”, because the teacher is at the end of their rope. With respect to teachers’ experience of overburdening workloads, this is not anything the student calls for.

Now, I’m done with my criticism. After all, not perfect legislation is better than no legislation at all. I hope that this bill, even if it’s not perfect, will prevent the horrible cases of abuse in restraint and seclusion cases in schools. If you are in the U.S. and involved with disability rights activism, I hope you will call congress to urge them to support the bill.

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Sense and Nonsense of Treatment and Educational Plans

Recently, there’s a lot of discussion about Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs) on one of the mailing lists I belong to. This discussion used to make me jealous, because, in the Netherlands, educational programming for students with disabilities may formally be based on a plan, but the plan is rarely followed and often, the student or parent isn’t even being informed. At least, when I was in high school and attending meetings with my visiting teacher of the visually impaired, these meetings were so informal that there really was no way of knowing whether what had been agreed upon, would be followed through on. Actually, in 2005, I received a copy of a document my visiting teacher had sent to the rehab center, and was surprised to find the strangest goals in it, that had neither been addressed nor worked on. I used to think that the reason was that most were social skills goals, and my teachers had long given up on that, but now I know better. Plans – whether they are school-related intervention plans, rehabilitation plans or treatment plans in mental health – are meant to be useless formalities that only serve to provide written documentation of what the professionals are already doing anyway. If any change of goals or strategies is suggested during a formal meeting, be guaranteed that it will not be followed – at least not if you happen to agree with the change. The nurses in the psychiatric hospital try to use the fact that I’ve been here for a year as an excuse, claiming that after this long, everything should be clear or will never become clear. Well, I tell you, it’s been this way ever since I came here last year: almost anytime anyone suggested that the current intervention might not be working or might not be the most desirable, this was put nicely into the treatment plan but forgotten the minute after the meeting had been closed. This happened to the suggestion that, rather than just putting me into time-out or threatening time-out in order to shut me up, we try to figure out why I had meltdowns. This suggestion was done on the January 24 treatment plan, so nowhere near the time when any change would mean nothing would ever become clear anymore. Not only was the time-out threat system continued without any change in intervention, and only terminated because I’d shut up for enough time, but it was the first thing my doctor came up with the day after I had a bad enough meltdown again. The only way to shove the ineffectiveness of the time-out stupidity into the people’s face, was by pointing out it was a major reason for the resocialization ward to turn me down. Now any meltdown is supposedly “normal” or “to be expected given circumstances”, regardless of the fact that I exhibit the exact same behavior, in roughly the same context, that earned me the time-out policy last June.

It’s not the hospital’s fault. Blindness rehab never gave me a plan, either, and skipped the ninth-week evaluation. They introduced formal rehabilitation plans only a few weeks after I’d started, so I never benefited from them, but I guess now that it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. The training home put together three goal-achievement plans in eighteen months, while you should be getting one every three months, and only revised my care plan when a new request for funding was due.

<PIt isn’t saying that no changes in intervention occur. In fact, they always happen inbetween planned meetings, so that you have no time to go over the implications and discuss them reasonably. Both of my time-out policies were introduced inbetween treatment plan discussions – the second only a week after my treatment plan meeting -, and so was the vast majority of my follow-up placement decisions. No wonder that it was such an unclear mess: the open admission ward vs. resocializatioon ward battle was finally resolved when we did discuss it at a formal treatment plan meeting. But don’t ever think that you, as the client or patient, can change the way you’re being dealt with inbetween treatment plans. When I withdrew my consent for the time-out policy in the middle of August, anticipating being refused by reso ward if the policy continued, I was told to wait till my treatment plan and was then threatened with forced discharge. Treatment or care plans are important if the staff need them to be – ie. if you want to make changes that they disagree with -, but are just formalities if it suits them better – ie. if they don’t want to answer your critical questions. Monday’s my next one, and one nurse has already sort of vowed to be personally responsible for making it a totally useless formality.

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Comments on the Use of Time-Out Rooms in Schools

I just read the umpteenth story about the use of a time-out room in schools in the United States. It’s about the Isabel Loeffler case again, the girl who was locked up in a time-out room for over three hours. I have no clue whether time-out can legally be used on children in the Netherlands. The law about restraint and time-out applies to children over age twelve only, but I’m not sure what would be done with younger children. In any case, a teacher or anyone who isn’t a doctor could never decide independently to put someone into time-out.

One thing I noticed in the Yahoo! News story about this case, is that a behavioral therapist was claiming that time-out might be reinforcing, so the child’s behavior would get worse. The rationale is that autistic children don’t like to be around others so would love to be isolated. Uh-huh, sure! If there is one single thing that might possibly be rewarding about being in a time-out room, it would be that there is fewer stimulation there, but this is very rarely truly the case. Besides, this tiny reward could easily be annihilated by the lack of control and uncertainty that someone locked up in a time-out room feels, which gets only worse if, like this girl, you’d get locked up for something nonsensical like “not listening”. In my opinion, there is absolutely no use for a time-out room in schools.

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