U.S. Seclusion Bill Alert

photo credit-David Paul Ohmer
creative commons license

I subscribe to the Wrightslaw Special Ed Advocate Newsletter. The Wrightslaw.com website (run by two people named "Wright"-who would have figured), which is a great source for getting/keeping yourself informed with all things having to do with special education law. They also publish a few books, which I have found helpful.

The use of restraints and seclusion in U.S. schools has been a fairly hot topic over the last few years in the U.S. There are at least 3 different (general) views on this. One, that all people deserve basic human rights, and tying them down and putting them into locked closets at school are not the type of thing that should be done to anyone. A second view (we'll refer to it as "the ignorant view", for lack of a better term), thinks that special ed kids shouldn't be mainstreamed with the general population in schools. And if they are, then if they are at all "disruptive" then it is perfectly OK to do "whatever it takes" to preserve peace and quiet in the schools, including tying kids down, putting them in locked closets, or having them arrested. And wouldn't things just be much better if they all just went back to "some other place" to be educated warehoused. A third view is (roughly) that any proposed laws will never do what we think they will do. The bills will just be used to normalize abnormal treatment of the disabled, including instituting/requiring ABA treatment as the "gold standard" of education cruel and unusual punishment.

Federal laws (referred to as "bills" before they are passed) are passed in the U.S. by being voted on by two houses of Congress, the House of Representatives (or just "House") and the Senate. After being signed by the President (or in some cases, even after them not being signed) the bill becomes law.

The U.S. House passed H.R. 4247 (the House version of the bill), and passed it on to the Senate. The Senate version is referred to as S. 2860. Evidently the Senate version would change how student's Individual Education Plans, or IEP's, are administered.

Wrightslaw sent out an e-mail alert today, stating:

The Senate would let school staff put restraint and seclusion in a child’s IEP or 504 plan. Call your Senators now and ask them to reject this proposal.

The Proposed Amendment to S. 2860 Will Take Away IDEA Rights. Unlike IDEA, 504, and ADA, the Restraint/Seclusion bill has been written to prevent parents from seeking to enforce it in with lawsuits.

The new law (S. 2860) would take precedence over the old law (IDEA).

The Wrightslaw alert also included these helpful instructions for taking action:

How to Call Your Senator

1. Always use the bill number, S. 2860, Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act. Please call; Senators pay more attention to calls. Email may get lost. Use Email only if you must.

2. Dial 202-224-3121 (TTY 202-225-1904) or go to www.senate.gov, click on Senators for contact information (including local numbers). You will have 2 Senators. When you call, ask for their Education or Disability Aide. Leave a detailed voicemail message if they are not available. Be sure to identify the bill by name, Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act and use the number, S. 2860.

3. Please call your Senators - but especially if you live in these states on the Senate HELP Committee: AK, AZ, CO, CT, GA, IA, KS , MD, MN, NC, NH, NM, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, TN, UT, VT, WA, WY. If you are in these states, check the HELP Committee website so you call the Senator on the Committee, http://help.senate.gov/. If you have friends or family in the Committee states, please get them to call. And even if you are not in a Committee state, please call. Senators from all over the country are impacting this bill.

4. Call Senator Tom Harkin and ask for his disability counsel (phone 202-224-3254, fax 202-224-9369). Senator Harkin chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, http://help.senate.gov/ and has much power over this bill. He needs to hear from parents and advocates from around the country; he certainly is hearing from the other side.

Here is a link to http://www.senate.gov/, which has a nice little "drop down" box on the top right to find your own state's senators, and to the committee page for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, http://help.senate.gov/.

Senator Tom Harkin, from Iowa, has always been a pretty good advocate for disability issues. He is also the Chair of this committee. Even if you don't live in his state, I urge you to contact him, and not let this portion of the bill be included.

For a brief overview of how U.S. laws are made, watch this:

Thinking Outside the Box

photo credit-Shutr
creative commons license

There are two old sayings that come to mind when I think of seclusion rooms. One's an old Japanese saying-"The nail that sticks up get's hammered down." The other one's a saying that's commonly used in surgery-"When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I think that both of these principles have come to govern the use of seclusion and restraints in special education. For too many years, in too many places, children who have occasional outbursts in schools have been seen as disruptions, nuisances, drains on resources, undisciplined, bad, and generally problems to be controlled. And the tools that have been most often resorted to to remedy the situation have been the ones seen to be most expedient-the use of restraints and seclusion rooms.

It was recognized over 50 years ago in psychiatric hospitals that use of seclusion rooms and restraints increased, rather than decreased, the incidence of behaviors. Why, then, does the use of these rooms persist into modern times in schools?

People must use them because they believe it's the best alternative. But what leads them to believe this, and what are the real facts?

In a monograph written for the Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders written in 2000, Michael P. George, the author and a special educator, refers to potentially damaging assumptions that he believes are present amongst special educators are the following:

Children with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) come from bad homes, and since we cannot change the homes, we cannot succeed with the children in our schools.

Children with E/BD are incapable of controlling their behavior or regulating their emotions, and it is up to us, the professionals, to control them.

Most children and youth with E/BD are so aggressive and violent they can be educated only in very restrictive settings.

The more serious the misbehavior of the children and youths under our care, the more intrusive and severe our methods must be in treating them.

Seclusion time-out and physical restraint are necessary interventions for the most serious and intractable of these youths.

He then asks the obvious question of how those beliefs guide practices and methods, and concludes that many in the field accept the use of seclusion and restraints because they are believed to be effective. Meanwhile, the obvious side effects of using violence to treat violence (anger, resentment, fear, resistance, feelings of hate, and even death) were being ignored.

George then describes how the culture of the school was changed, which resulted in a year to year difference of a decrease in the use of physical restraints by 69%, and a decrease in the number of minutes spent in seclusion by 77%.

Ryan et al., in an study entitled "Reducing the Use of Seclusion and Restraint in a Day School Program", describes how

The majority of students placed in seclusion during both school years came from elementary and middle school. High school students were rarely placed in time-out during either year (10.7% and 12.4% respectively). Restraints were also performed much more frequently among younger students during both years. During the 2002–2003 school year, the preponderance of all restraints (80.9%) were performed on elementary students. Students in middle school were much less likely to be restrained (14.7%), while high school students rarely (4.4%) experienced this procedure. During the second year, the elementary grades still represented the majority (67.9%) of all restraints performed, while no restraints were performed on high school students.

The median age of those placed in seclusion was 13, while the median age of those restrained was 8, even though the study group included children up through high school (approximately 18 years of age). He attempts to explain these findings thru positing the following possibilities:

1. their possessing fewer mechanisms for coping with frustration,
2. staff may believe intrusive procedures may be more developmentally appropriate for younger children, or
3. that staff may be apprehensive to perform these procedures on larger and stronger individuals.

Whatever the reason, it seems apparent that it's generally considered OK to restrain and abuse kids in special education, especially when they're young.

Dr. Stuart Ablon, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts (yes, the same state that houses the Judge Rotenberg Center) is the Director of a program called "Think:Kids" in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. This program espouses collaborative problem solving (CPS) with kids who have behavior problems, instead of the use of restraints and seclusion rooms. As one might expect from the name, CPS helps kids and adult caretakers work together to resolve problems in a mutually satisfactory manner. They try to identify specific cognitive skills that individuals lack (executive skills, emotional regulation skills, social skills, etc.) and find ways to teach them.

Unlike the assumptions cited above that special educators often have, they teach a different approach based on respect and collaboration. This approach was first laid out by Dr. Ross Greene in the book "The Explosive Child". Dr.'s Ablon and Greene collaborated on another book on the subject, "Treating Explosive Kids". While I'm not too wild about the use of the term "explosive" in the titles of these books to describe kids (are they about to literally blow up?) I am all for the philosophy and recommendations they make in their books.

I've referred before to how Ange is working hard at a grassroots campaign in Missouri against the use of seclusion and restraint rooms. If you haven't stopped by there before, please do and lend her some support. If you haven't signed any of the petitions below, then I would suggest that, too. And if you haven't written or called your lawmakers lately, remember that it might make a difference.


http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/831847137

http://autism.change.org/actions/view/end_the_use_of_aversives_restraints_and_seclusion

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/173391/22317452?m=b9452798

Let them know that there is a different and better way to treat our kids then seclusion and restraint.

Fighting Restraints and Seclusion

Blogger Ange at http://nomoseclusion.blogspot.com/ has been waging a quiet, persistent campaign against the use of restraints and seclusions in Missouri schools. She's been gathering accounts of children's experiences when put into seclusion rooms in schools, and the people at the Misssouri
Protection and Advocacy Services have taken an interest in this cause. She's also traveled to the state capital to testify regarding pending legislation that would shield teachers from prosecution when they get physical with kids in school.

This week her efforts have really paid off, as she's gotten media attention. Two television stations have aired stories on this this week (one of them on two successive nights), and a popular local radio call in show also took on the topic today.

The local NBC affiliate story can be found here. Do drop by and (respectfully) let them know that it's just not right.

And if you see Ange around here, remember to thank her.