You Can Help End Abusive Restraint and Seclusion of Special Needs Students

Managing Editor's Note: No matter what your approach to treatment, I think we can all agree that our children should never be abused in school. This is a "non-denominational" action alert.

Please click HERE to see the full action alert at the NAA site. Thank you to Lori McIlwain for the beautiful poster campaign.

19 STATES HAVE ZERO REGULATIONS PROTECTING OUR DISABLED CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS!!!

STATES THAT DO HAVE REGULATIONS OR GUIDELINES ARE NOT BEING FOLLOWED BY MANY SCHOOL DISTRICTS.

Our federal lawmakers say they have not heard from us on harmful restraint and seclusion!!

According to a May 2009 government report on restraint and seclusion practices, an overwhelming amount of abuse, neglect, and emotional abuse is happening in schools throughout the country.

THE REPORT FOUND NO FEDERAL LAWS IN PLACE THAT REGULATE RESTRAINT & SECLUSION
 
THE REPORT REVEALED THAT STATE REGULATIONS ARE “WIDELY DIVERGENT” AND THAT 19 STATES HAVE NOTHING THAT REGULATE RESTRAINT & SECLUSION IN SCHOOLS
 
THE REPORT REVEALED TEN CASE STUDIES WHERE CHILDREN WITH VARYING DISABILITIES DIED AS A RESULT OF RESTRAINT AND SECLUSION, WERE SERIOUSLY HARMED, OR EMOTIONALLY TRAUMATIZED

WHAT YOU CAN ALSO DO RIGHT NOW TO HELP PROTECT YOUR CHILD:

VISIT NAA or WWW.APRAIS.TASH.ORG TO DOWNLOAD A SAMPLE “NO CONSENT” LETTER TO PROVIDE YOUR CHILD’S TEACHERS, PRINCIPAL AND HAVE IT PLACED INTO YOUR CHILD’S IEP.

For more information, visit:
http://familiesagainstrestraintandseclusion.blogspot.com/
http://aprais.tash.org

Comments

[Benedetta Stilwell]

grammaknows; May I ask what part of the country you are in? Aids aggressive to the student and absent teacher is suppose to = fired - not reassigned! Sorry guys, school at its very best is still just plain hard let alone bruises that a teacher will not explain or wrapping arms around a student should only mean a quick hug. The world really has gone mad.

[GrammaKnows]

I just returned from a meeting regarding our grandson's school. The Teacher's Union is sticking by their procedure for teacher reassignment when there is a problem in the classroom - here's the scenario -

Teacher absent from room too frequently, aides not properly supervised, aides aggressive with the children, teacher under-reports or fails to report incidents.
With complaint of excessive force, disciplinary action taken in the form of formal complaint in the file, a "professional development plan" instituted.

A "professional development plan" is supposed to be a probationary action. Teacher &/or aide CANNOT BE REMOVED from the program/classroom or school without THREE SEQUENTIAL YEARS of "professional development plan" in place.

IF THE UNION is not brought on board to support IMMEDIATE removal of teachers and staff alleged to be abusive and aggressive, legislation to prohibit seclusion and restraints will be useless.

The Teacher's Unions must be considered complicit in abuse and liable for consequences if they DO NOT modify the disciplinary policy...and the revisions MUST override any tenure provisions. The safety of a child unable to defend themselves is a higher priority than protecting dues paying members that victimize children.

[Stagmom]

I just double checked the links - appear OK. I shortened the NAA link - thanks for asking. KIM

[GrammaKnows]

The links to NAA are not working - does anyone have info on why we can't get to this site?

[Benedetta Stilwell]

Gotogorra;

I can not imagine in the school districts I have worked in, any child being injuried let alone dying and that teacher ever working again! I am also sure the teacher would be investigated,prosecuted, mobbed, and it would be on the news too! I guess I do live in a sheltered area of America!

Now I don't mean that it was not really hard to get my son through school because it was. I have had nervous break downs and wept over some school incidents, but it was the circumstances of my child's illness.

[Gatogorra]

Bernadetta,

The training for teachers now is a joke in so many places--a little half day commercial seminar where they basically learn all the deadly holds-- but not how to prevent death and nothing about the physical limitations of certain disabilities that would make these children so much easier to kill than average. Then the school can say the teachers "are trained" and the commercial seminar outfit walks away with taxpayer money. The restraints are not used to prevent bodily harm in the vast majority of cases but as punishment and enforcement of compliance.

If you listened to Teri Arranga's broadcast the other day, the people in the discussion were laughing bitterly over the fact that yes, there has to be a law saying it's illegal for a teacher to sit on a student because teachers and aides are doing it and kids are dying or being badly injured. Common sense DOES have to be legislated down to the most minute detail because common sense is lacking and malice and sneakiness are pervasive at the moment.

Maybe you didn't encounter it in your particular school system, but schools are a government institution: where one school strays, all are responsible to amend the weaknesses in the system that threaten the safety of even one child.

Parents at this point have no recourse; even if their child is killed, teachers and aides simply go back to work. Right now, I'm looking at over 230 pages of parent testimony of grave harm done to children in seclusion rooms and with "crisis intervention strategies" across the country. Children seriously injured and traumatized for such offenses as crying or throwing paper, flapping their hands or "not listening". In most cases, criminal charges were rejected by the police, the schools would not act against their staff even in the face of the most damning evidence. Kids are dying and things have to change.

[Benedetta Stilwell]

There are times when students need to be constrained to protect other students and themselves. I taught school, as well as subbed for years. I even taught a behavioral disorder class for three months when the new teacher ran for the hills to escape. I knew all these students from grade school and I had to protect three from the other three. School is one of those complex systems that can only be figured out by observing and correcting any problems that come about, and there are no easy answers. Parents need to be watchful, other teachers needs to be watchful for abuse, but how do you write laws for that?

[LisaB in Mass]

Seclusion is such an awful way to punish kids, it doesn't work. I had my own 6 year old ASD son removed from his classroom in Massachusetts because the special education teacher was secluding him for long periods in the hallway as well as in a nearby technology closet (the door had a window so her thinking was it was not a closet and this was legal).

Seclusion and restraint is happening now, don't let Teachers and Admistrators tell you it isn't. Make sure your district has training procedures for using proper restraints in place for regular ed teachers, special ed techers as well as substitutes. Your child could have the best teacher in the world, one day a sub shows up for a few days and problems can arise if they are not trained to work with children with special needs and untrained in proper restraint methods.

[Gatogorra]

Nothing will stop this except one standard of federal laws against it and rigorous enforcement. During the broadcast with Teri Arranga yesterday, Phyllis Musumeci of Families Against Restraint and Seclusion made it clear that schools have no incentive to heed a non-consent form from parents for any of these abuses because, as she put it, "the schools police themselves". You can write your demands into the IEP but there's no law forcing schools to respect them.

Anyone who's been turned away by the police and told to take complaints of abuse through the school's non-independent "Due Process" knows this to the true. There is nowhere to go with these cases and schools operate at their own discretion. Some do the right thing but they don't *have* to. Even Wrightslaw's wonderful "map" for dealing with schools' procedural inadaquacies is not geared for this level of immediate and extreme danger to disabled children.

The biomed community has been slow to react to this but that's changing because of the efforts of Lori McIlwain and others who've taken on this enormously complex issue and tried to gather together the evidence provided by parent advocates like Phyllis Musumeci. It may be that, since biomed parents tend to be organized, may represent "trouble" to the schools from the get-go and are perhaps more intensely vigilant about the details of their children's schooling than some, our kids might be slightly more "risky" to target. But that doesn't mean it can't and won't happen to children in our community. It will only get worse and more wide spread than it already is if it's allowed to continue.

[No more public school for us]

This is something that most people don't want to think about. I homeschooled my autistic son for kindergarden and tried to send him to school for first grade. He came home from his special ed class with bruise on his cheek and told me that the teacher did it. Now, I don't know if that was true and nobody else would have believe me or him. No explanation from the school. Anyway, I homeschooled him again for two years and tried again for third grade. He came home one day and put my arms behind my back and said that's what the teachers do. So, I'll be homeschooling him again. It's like a warzone in these schools. Nobody would believe the abuse these chidren with autism face. Teachers are literally physically abusing these children and nobody cares. I use to wonder how the Nazi's got away with what they did and I've learned that it takes just a few people looking the other way. Someday these "teachers" may end up being abused in a nursing home and everybody will look the other way and nobody will care.

[Sonja]

My daughter is academically very bright and can speak three languages but cannot function in a classroom with 26 other kids. She has significant auditory sensitivity and noise level was overwhelming as was the chaos. The only other option was the special ed room with two other children who were non-verbal. They communicated by screaming. The screaming was so painful to her that she would start screaming to try to drown out the other girls scream. As a result, she was put into one of those closets but without headphones and this terrified her as well. When I found out what was going on I removed her from the school permanently. To this day she cannot tolerate the screaming noises of other children...it is a post traumatic reaction. This was not her fault and it was not the fault of the other child who could not talk. It was the fault of the people in charge and it was my fault for letting it go on as long as it did...I will never put her in that situation again and I will continue to try to help her recover.

[bensmyson]

Last year in North Carolina, a 12 year old boy with high functioning autism was kept secluded in a retrofitted closet at school. He was given headphones to watch tv, listen to songs, etc. One day the teacher entered the room and for one reason or another he refused to leave. The teacher grabbed him and the boy struck her once in the face. No serious injury. The mother, whose husband was in Iraq, was called to pick the son up and he was suspended.

Two weeks later the mother reads the newspaper and discovers that her son had been arrested for assault. She was never notified.

The school said they have a policy to arrest anyone that strikes a teacher, no matter the reason or the age.

The charges were dropped. The boy is back in the closet. He has the same teacher, which by the way, has no formal training with autism.