Disability Rights Oregon Issues Report on Restraint & Seclusion of Children with Disabilities in Oregon Schools

I am posting the following press release in its entirety. After you read it, I urge you to read the report itself and read the descriptions of what some children have been subjected to. It’s enough to make you cry. But the report also offers hope as it shows what can happen when school districts get training and commit to reducing restraint and seclusion.

That Congress has failed to enact meaningful federal legislation is a disgrace. That Alexa Posny – the U.S. Department of Education’s top honcho in special education can respond as she did in this recent interview with Disability Scoop is outrageous:

Disability Scoop: Last year Congress considered a bill to restrict the use of restraint and seclusion in schools, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Do you believe that federal legislation is needed to address this issue?

Alexa Posny: The bottom line is that there should be no harm that is ever brought to any child. I wish we could count on people to do the right thing, but if that’s not occurring then we may need to legislate.

One of the things that’s already been put into place is we’re collecting data to show how many times a child has been secluded or restrained, so the data will be the first place to take a look at what other things should be done.

Sure, Ms. Posny, take your time. Collect yet more data while children are being harmed and put at risk of death, permanent injury, or psychological trauma.

You can continue to collect data after safety protections and restrictions are enacted. Congress must act. And Congress and the Department of Education officials must accept moral responsibility for any child who is harmed by their failure to act.

In the meantime, here is what Disability Rights Oregon has to say on the issue:

DRO has issued this report to provide support for House Bill 2939. Sponsored by Representative Sara Gelser from Corvallis, HB 2939 will receive a public hearing in the Oregon House Education Committee at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, February 16, 2011. The bill will create enforceable minimum safety standards, and ensure that parents learn about incidents of restraint and seclusion and have an opportunity to have those incidents reviewed.

DISABILITY RIGHTS OREGON
PRESS RELEASE
February 9, 2011
Contact: Bob Joondeph, Executive Director, 503-243-2081

Today, Disability Rights Oregon released a new report, Keep School Safe For Everyone: A Report on the Restraint & Seclusion of Children with Disabilities in Oregon Schools.

In Oregon, and across the country, children in our schools may be placed in restraint or seclusion in response to behavioral issues. “Restraint” is the restriction of student’s movement by holding the student manually or with devices such as tape, rope and shackles. “Seclusion” is involuntary confinement in a room or other enclosure. These practices still occur even though extensive research has shown the restraint and seclusion fail to diminish challenging behavior and, in fact, make it worse. In recognition of this situation, the Oregon Department of Education (DOE) issued its first administrative rules to regulate these practices in 2007.

Since the new rules were adopted, DRO has continued to receive complaints of inappropriate use of seclusion and restraint. This prompted us to conduct an investigation to find out if schools are actually following the rules. We learned that while many school districts have adopted policies as required by DOE, most of those policies do not comply with state requirements and some districts have no policies at all.

“Across the nation, children have died and been seriously injured in restraint. Children have committed suicide in seclusion rooms. In Oregon, students have suffered a variety of physical and psychological injuries,” said Chris Shank, DRO Attorney. “Using Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports can avoid these terrible injuries and protect all students, teachers and school personnel who are put at risk by physical conflict.”

DRO has issued this report to provide support for House Bill 2939. Sponsored by Representative Sara Gelser from Corvallis, HB 2939 will receive a public hearing in the Oregon House Education Committee at 1:00 pm on Wednesday, February 16, 2011. The bill will create enforceable minimum safety standards, and ensure that parents learn about incidents of restraint and seclusion and have an opportunity to have those incidents reviewed.

Last year, the US House of Representatives passed legislation to regulate restraint and seclusion in schools. The Senate did not act on the bill before adjournment. Set out below are links to federal reports that the House Education Committee relied upon.

Keep School Safe For Everyone: A Report on the Restraint & Seclusion of Children with Disabilities in Oregon Schools

GAO Report: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09719t.pdf

GAO Highlights: http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d09719thigh.pdf

School is Not Supposed to Hurt: http://www.nationaldisabilityrightsnetwork.org/sr/SR-Report.pdf

School is Not Supposed to Hurt Update:
http://www.nationaldisabilityrightsnetwork.org/sr/srjan10/Schoo-%20is-Not-Supposed-to-Hurt-%28NDRN%29.pdf

Some very disturbing statistics on restraint and seclusion

Colleen Shaddox has a must-read article on YouthToday that was written for  Ct. Health I-Team. It begins:

Six-year-old Anthony Wickham weighed about 48 pounds when five adults forcibly restrained him at Plainfield’s Shepherd Elementary School. Anthony, a student in the school’s Clinical Day Treatment program, was regularly locked in a windowless room that measured four by six feet, a court document says.

The allegations sound highly unusual, but Connecticut schools reported using emergency restraint and seclusion more than 18,000 times last year.

C-HIT received the data from the state Department of Education after making a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

“This is really pretty disturbing,” said Alicia Woodsby, public policy director for the National Alliance for Mental Illness in Connecticut. The number of incidents far exceeds what her organization suspected and “illustrates why we need transparency on this and better reporting of it,” she said.

The state Department of Education cautions that these numbers are preliminary and unaudited. In only one other state, California, are schools required by law to report these incidents to the state. California schools reported about 21,000 “behavioral emergencies” in the same time period in public and non-public schools. California’s K-12 public school population was 6,252,011 in 2009. Connecticut’s was 563,869.

Read the entire article.

Despite a GAO report and a Congressional hearing in May of 2009, nothing — NOTHING — has been passed by Congress or enacted into law to protect children from unnecessary, cruel, and inhumane restraint and seclusion.   Nor is there any federal law that mandates reporting of instances of restraint and seclusion to either state education departments or parents of children.

In Congress’s all-too-common mode, protections got watered down before a bill passed the House and its watered down counterpart  then stalled in the Sentate.

Children are being injured and deprived of their safety, their dignity, and their civil liberties.  Children in public schools urgently need protections.  Perhaps Congress could stop debating tax cuts for the wealthy and think about the horrible things that are being done to children in the name of “education?”

[post edited to reflect article author's affiliation]

Disability Group Comes Out Against Restraint, Seclusion Bill

Michelle Diament writes:

At least one disability advocacy group is now opposing a bill in Congress that they once championed after changes would allow restraint and seclusion to be included in students’ individualized education plans, or IEPs.

In an e-mail to members on Monday, the head of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, or COPAA – a 1,200 member organization of special education attorneys, advocates and parents — said the group opposes the legislation in its current form because of the IEP provision and would like members of Congress to reconsider.

“COPAA cannot support the current legislation because S.3895 permits restraint and locked seclusion as planned interventions in students’ education plans, including behavior plans and individualized education programs,” wrote the group’s executive director Denise Marshall. “By allowing restraint and locked seclusion as planned interventions, S.3895 weakens protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and legitimizes practices that the bill seeks to prevent.”

Read more on Disability Scoop.

Note that H.R. 4247, the House version of a restraint and seclusion bill, includes this language (emphasis added by me):

(4) The use of physical restraint or seclusion as a planned intervention shall not be written into a student’s education plan, individual safety plan, behavioral plan, or individualized education program (as defined in section 602 of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1401)).

That S.3895 proposes to include restraint and seclusion in the I.E.P. is problematic since restraint and seclusion should only to be used for emergencies involving imminent injury to the student or other people. As such, it is not a planned educational intervention, it should apply equally to non-special education students, and should not be included in an IEP. I am particularly concerned that if restraint and seclusion are included in IEPs, we will see a lot of “creep” whereby they are not just being written in for genuine safety emergencies, but as programmatic elements that allow staff to restrain students for all sorts of minor infractions.

When H.R. 4247 was being negotiated, strong consequences for staff who abused students was omitted as a way of placating schools. Enough is enough. This bill needs to protect students from harm, and if they water it down, it doesn’t accomplish its goal.

Parents need to get on the phone to call their senators to tell them that they want a strong bill that protects students.

Tell the Senate to Get Off the Dime on H.R. 4247

In March of this year, H.R. 4247,  Keeping All Students Safe Act, passed in the House and was sent to the Senate where it was read once and referred to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. And there it has seemingly languished in committee while children continue to be put at risk of physical and emotional harm due to restraint and seclusion techniques.

Just today, a news story out of Iowa describes three school districts that violated state laws on restraint and seclusion. Was anyone criminally charged with abuse? Were they even disciplined?

H.R. 4247, while well intended, did not and does not go far enough in terms of monitoring for compliance and in terms of consequences for individuals and districts that abuse children through improper restraint and seclusion. Yet even in its watered-down form, it is just sitting in a Senate committee, which does nothing to protect children.

Contact your Senators and tell them you want action on this bill.   You can obtain contact information by plugging your zip code into the form on Congress.org or using the pull-down menu from the U.S. Senate site. The following is a list of members of the Senate committee. If your Senator is on the list, be sure to call and tell them you are a constituent who wants a strong bill now — not after more children suffer or die.

Student restraint measure stalls in Wisconsin

Amy Hetzner of the Journal Sentinel reports that a bill that would limit the use of restraint and seclusion in Wisconsin schools appears to be fizzling out:

Facing opposition from school administrators and teachers, the prospects for legislation to limit when Wisconsin students could be physically restrained or secluded in time-out rooms appear to be fizzling out in the state capitol.

Time is running out in the current legislative session, with the state Assembly’s education committee yet to take any action on a bill that would require school staff training in alternative measures and mandate reporting when students are restrained or secluded in emergency situations.

A recent state Senate hearing showed the deep divide between disability groups, which argue a law is necessary to halt the improper use of possibly psychologically damaging techniques on children, and education groups, which worry that a law would stop teachers from taking necessary measures to stop children from harming themselves and others.

Read more on the Journal Sentinel. The comments on the story by readers really represent the diversity of views on this debate.

« Previous Page — Next Page »