Public Schools Turning to Forcible Restraint
Calm Down or Else
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/health/15restraint.html
“The children return from school confused, scared and sometimes with bruises on their wrists, arms or face. Many won’t talk about what happened, or simply can’t, because they are unable to communicate easily, if at all.”
“His son, then 12… ‘didn’t want to go to school because he thought the school was trying to kill him.’”
“For more than a decade, parents of children with developmental and psychiatric problems have pushed to gain more access to mainstream schools and classrooms for their sons and daughters. One unfortunate result, some experts say, is schools’ increasing use of precisely the sort of practices families hoped to avoid by steering clear of institutionalized settings: takedowns, isolation rooms, restraining chairs with straps, and worse.”
“In April, a 9-year-old Montreal boy with autism died of suffocation when a special education teacher wrapped him in a weighted blanket to calm him, according to the coroner’s report. Two Michigan public school students with autism have died while being held on the ground in so-called prone restraint.”
“‘Behavior problems in school are way up, and there’s good reason to believe that the use of these procedures is up, too.’”
“For teachers, who have many other responsibilities — not least, to teach — managing even one child with a disability can add a wild card to the day. ‘In a class of 30 to 35 children, there’s a huge question of how much safety or teaching a teacher can provide if he or she is being called on to calm or contain a student on a regular basis,’ said Patti Ralabate, a special education expert at the National Education Association. ‘The teacher is responsible for the safety of all the children in the classroom.’”
“During the 2005-6 school year, an 8-year-old with a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder and mild mental retardation was repeatedly locked in a ’seclusion room’ alone, adjacent to the classroom — at least 31 times in a single year.”
“In another school, a teacher held a 12-year-old with a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder ‘face down on the floor, straddling him at his hips, and holding his hands behind his back,’”
“Dr. Peterson, the Nebraska professor, illustrates the challenges by citing two recent cases in Iowa. In one, the parents of an 11-year-old who died while being held down called for a ban on restraints; in the other, parents charged that a school failed their son by not restraining him. The boy ran away and drowned.”
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