Abuse, neglect and humiliation at a public school too near to you
August 25, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Abuse, neglect and humiliation: Not exactly words that are generally associated with education, school, students, you’d think. But that’s not been the experience of some 100 parents of autistic children in Florida, according to today’s Scripps News. They’ve been calling the state attorney general and two Port St. Lucie families—including Melissa Barton, whose son Alex Barton was voted out of his kindergarten class—have filed notice that they intend to sue the school district. Parents are raising concerns about autistic children being restrained or secluded and about a lack of sufficient training and of teachers of autistic children in general.
“They’re just not prepared for some of these kids,” said Musumeci, who says her then-12-year-old autistic son was restrained 89 times in 14 months and, on one occasion, put in a closet during music class. “I think people lose their patience, they lose their temper.”
Earlier this year, the New York Times asked if physical restraints are being used more and more in public schools. One reason my husband and I became so insistent on only certain school programs for Charlie was that our former school district said that its teachers could “handle” Charlie’s self-injurious behaviors themselves. But the way they were trained to handle these turned out to be the basket hold and other physical restraints which have had lasting, and frankly bad, effects on Charlie. The school district wanted Charlie to stay in-district primarily for economic reasons; the consultant who was brought in to address Charlie’s “challenging behaviors” was a friend of a top administrator, and our suggestions for other consultants who knew Charlie were brushed aside.
Besides training, there’s a need for constant supervision and oversight, and support for staff. When someone’s told to restrain a child, does that person pause to think about how the child feels?
Having experienced both an autism specific and mainstream school for our daughter, I can only say that perhaps it might be better to push for specialist schools rather than fighting through the courts for an uncertain outcome. Our autism school is the one shining beacon in our lives, there is no need to explain anything to the teachers, they’re trained to deal with autism. There just doesn’t seem to be a place in mainstream schools for these types of kids, they don’t seem to fit, not in the classroom, nor with their peers. Our school has been so successful in teaching autistic kids that it is to be expanded from just primary to secondary as well.
I remember hearing rumors about similar things happening in the neighboring county and being thankful we didn’t live there. But really, it “could” happen anywhere and that is scary.
When someone’s told to restrain a child, does that person pause to think about how the child feels?
You’ld think so.
I’ll out myself and say that I feel that there are times in emergencies where there is significant and real concern of injury and that have not been amenable to competent deescalation, where restraint may be called for…used parsimoniously, ethically and under safety guidelines, because improperly applied, restraint can kill,
That said, I feel that it is overused as a matter of routine in many settings, without consideration of the ethics, evaluation and development of alternative behavior management and antecedent strategies. The latter takes patience, time and skill, but represents an improving situation for everyone in many ways.
I had the horrible experience some years back of watching restraint being used as routine behavior management because those involved did not know alternative strategies to apply…or at least did not do so during the time I observed the restraint. Basically the strategy appeared to be to “wear the kid down” and it routinized into a physical power struggle that occurred in the full view of the other students in the room. So besides the feelings of the child being restrained, there was that of the other children who were witness…what precisely were they also learning? The last straw was where the paras decided to improvise on known techniques and started dragging the kid by his hands with his toes off the floor. That was horrific enough but one para lost his grip and I just barely was able to get under the child’s head before it hit the terrazzo floor. Everyone was very embarrassed.
I filed a complaint about the appropriateness and oversight, and as a result was banned from the room for violating “confidentiality” and demoralizing staff “doing their job”.
And yet in their day-to-day, most people would see these people as fine folk…nice people. It was the banal institutionalization of these practices that scared the h*ll out of me, and still does.
my 11 year old has been restrained constantly, carried by his ankles & wrists from the school office to my car (in the parking lot), locked into an old bathroom used as a time out room (everything’s stripped but it has the same linoleum floor, nothing for safety). i took a picture. my son would loose it being locked in there, often stripping down and urinating. Then they want to mention that – like he would do that if he weren’t locked in an old bathroom. My son has AS & SID.
the schools say they’re not sure he has autism although 6 or 7 doctors say he does. and the school evaluations say “maybe”. i’ve had a lawyer & gone to mediation. the school didn’t really try to do their part. Do i have it in me to fight more?
i just pulled my son out from experiencing more harm from school & am homeschooling him until we can move somewhere else.