Seclusion and Restraint: America's Children with Disabilities in Crisis

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by Marcie Lipsitt
Tuesday, January 27, 2009

            Patient is physically prevented from leaving.  Seclusion may only be used for the

            management of violent or self-destructive behavior.

Education personnel in school districts across the United States are using seclusion and restraint as a first line of behavioral intervention and children are not only suffering emotional and physical abuse - - they are dying.  Examples cited in NDRN's report of the horrific abuses suffered by children with disabilities have been based upon formal investigations by P &As in all fifty states. 

• Children with mental illness, ASD, AD/HD and other disabilities have died in Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin and Georgia.  Only Michigan has "standards" (not a statute or even regulation in their special education rules) enacted by their State Board of Education only after two fatal incidents of restraint. Michigan still allows the use of restraint and only prohibits seclusion and prone restraint. 
• Only Connecticut has passed a statute that prohibits the use of seclusion and restraint in their schools and treatment facilities.
• Only Pennsylvania has "regulations" (again not a law) that prohibit seclusion and   restraint.
• Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Georgia, Guam, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, the Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, the Virgin Islands, West Virginia and Wyoming have no policies, standards, regulations or statutes on the use or prohibition of seclusion and restraint.
• Only Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Michigan and Pennsylvania ban the use of "prone restraint."
• Only Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia require parents are notified when their child's school has used seclusion and restraint. 
• Children across America have been found to be; tied and strapped down to chairs,  and wheelchairs, grabbed and dragged into rooms, held in arm locks, handcuffed, placed in coffin-like boxes and cells, locked in closets for hours and subjected to other humiliating, emotionally and physically abusive and traumatizing acts of violence by school personnel. 

There are growing bodies of research on positive behavioral interventions that do not include the use of seclusion and restraint.  IDEA 2004 includes discipline provisions that refer to the use of a "Functional Behavioral Assessment" (FBA).  The principle behind a "Functional Behavioral Assessment" is that education personnel can assess the antecedents (the cause) of a student's inappropriate behaviors and implement positive behavioral interventions to reduce and then eliminate their occurrence.  The problem is that America's special education and general education teachers, counselors, social workers, school psychologists and all ancillary staff, are for the most part, not trained to implement a FBA or write an appropriate and effective Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP).  Nor, are they required to learn as most states have no standards, policies, regulations or laws that require education personnel are trained in FBAs or positive behavioral interventions.