Prone Restraint Used on 7-year-old Autistic Boy
April 16, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Two teachers from the Ocean View School District (Southern California) used a technique called prone restraint on a 7-year-old boy with autism and severe disabilities on September 6, 2007. The student suffered bruises, scratches, and a broken nose. According to MSNBC, the student, who does not speak, was throwing classroom items, hitting and running when teacher Gina Messig and assistant teacher Mai Vo used prone restraint to calm the student:
The two teachers held the child’s leg and arm while the student was face down on the floor, the school report said. Prone restraint which means the person is held face down is rarely used and is usually the last resort to control a child, experts say.
The student’s father, Robert Velasquez, was not informed of the incident until the following day, September 7th; according to state law, parents are to be notified on the same day that prone restraint is used. Velasquez only noticed his son’s injuries after three days, when the boy’s face, chest and stomach had bruises and swelling. On January 24, Velasquez filed claims as a precursor to a lawsuit against the the Ocean View district and the city of Huntington Beach for a minimum of $505,000 in damages. On March 21, the Orange County District Attorney’s office announced that criminal charges would not be filed against Messig, the teacher, after Huntington Beach police reviewed the case.
In a previous school district, physical restraints—the basket hold—were used on my son when he engaged in self-injurious and aggressive behaviors We were not informed by the school district that such methods would be used: The use of such procedures should have been written into a behavior intervention plan. My son’s behaviors worsened to the point that, in November of 2005, we had to take him out of school because the school simply could not handle his behaviors and did not know what to do. So began an odyssey to find Charlie a school to go to that culminated with us moving in with my in-laws in June of 2006, so that Charlie could go to the autism program in their town.
Charlie’s current teachers have been able to teach him to communicate his frustrations and needs and other techniques and things are much, much, much better (that’s an understatement).
After we took Charlie out of his old school district, he often pretended to restrain himself. He does this less and less, but, needless to say, my husband Jim and I can only wonder at the effects of the physical force and restraints on him, and I suspect that Robert Velasquez must be wondering the same.
Physical restraints are used more than most people know. When I worked at group homes we were trained to use the restraints mentioned here. We had to restarin M when she was younger and trying to harm herself. Sometimes they are necessary but I don’t really trust most professionals to make that call. I hope parents realize that restraints should be written into a Behavioral Plan for schools before every being used. Not to mention staff should be trained on how to do them. Restraints can do a lot of long time harm to kids. Even to our daughter. She began to want physical restraints because she needed deep pressure when she was feeling most out of control. We did not know that until we had done some damage. A counselor finally explained it to us and we never restrained her again after that. We had to use medications to calm her instead and I do think that worked better.
I dunno. If the kid is hurting the other kids, obviously you have to do _something_. Maybe there was some anger in the minds of the teacher types?
This type of restraint is so dangerous–children have died as a result of it. My eyes were opened to this on http://www.caica.org. I was horrified by the information there. Very scary–especially when you put your trust into those that are caring for your kids while they are at school.
Glad you were able to find such a great school for Charlie. One reason we have considered moving (back to, for me) to NJ.
@justthisguy
Of course if a child is hurting himself or others, something needs to be done. I believe that the plan of action needs to be decided upon ahead of time…I mean, for example, my son sometimes wants to run around his classroom and tear things off the walls which is not okay. His teachers and aides (who are all well-trained in dealing with such behaviors) have used many other methods that do not include restraining Pete and those methods have worked very well. One example is removing him from the classroom where an aide will take him for a walk around the campus.
The whole point is to teach the child self-regulation — help teach the child what he can do if he’s overwhelmed, angry, whatever the case may be. Kids don’t hurt themselves or others for no reason even if we don’t completely understand what the reasons are all the time.
All I can say is that in the right classroom (where Pete is now) as compared to the wrong one (where he was last year) has made a world of difference. Pete’s “rough days” this year do not involve hurting anybody as they did last year.
That frustrates me as much as the use of adversives.
If a child is hurting other children, something has to be done, but there must be a way to do it without harming the child.
What I’d like to see is a test for Mito dysfunction in un-vaccinated children then see if getting vaccinated later causes them to develop that disease (mercury known to cause M-D) Or how about compare never vaccinated children to vaccinated children. I’d bet 1000-1 that the never vaccinated children are 100X’s more healthy not only in childhood but throughout life. Of course damaging the immune system leads to illness. As for the need to vaccinate, please, that’s a well orchestrated lie by the drug companies. and the Bush family. See this article for some proof: educate-yourself.org/vcd/
Especially since they’re supposed to be trained. My mom had to physcally stop me from hitting myself and others, or throwing things or breaking lamps or computers, but I don’t remember ever getting hurt from her restraining me; she has no training whatever. It’s unsettling how many people are allowed to use harmful restraints when they are the ones who should know most what are the most appropriate ways to protect everyone’s safety. You know what? It’s unacceptable behavior. Maybe we should restrain them, then give them aversives. Maybe THEN they’ll learn.
So a little 7-year old kid is runnig and throwing stuff. Refusing to listen. Best remedy: put two adults on top and break his nose? Sheesh.
I can assure you at least one of my brothers used to throw stuff around and not listen at that age and no one ever dared do anything like that to him. And all 3 of us used to fight with eachother outright (including hitting and much more) until well past age 7 and nothing like this was ever necessary.
Our son Christian was restrained 89 times in 14 months. At the time we didn’t know he was being restrained or put in seclusion. We pulled our son out of Lantana Middle school in Palm Beach County in October of 2005 because we thought he was having a nervous breakdown. He started out with small behavior problems, but by the time the school staff at Lantana Middle school was done with him his behaviors had escalated at school and we started having behavior problems at home where there were none before. He became very depressed, easily upset, he started having sleep problems and would cry continuously in the morning not wanting to go to school. Christian was so distraught when we pulled him out of school that we had to seek psychiatric help for him and he was put on medication. At the time we didn’t know anything about children being restrained and had no idea what PCM was and didn’t even know schools were allowed to restrain children with disabilities or any children. A year after we pulled him out of school we were instructed to request copies of the PCM restraint logs. Four weeks later we received the documents and were shocked to find out how many times he had been restrained over a 14 month period. He was prone restrained 23 times that we know of. We never knew this was happening to him. We believe that the actual PCM restraint numbers are higher because the 6th grade PCM restraint logs are missing from the school files and we can’t get the school district or the FLDOE to do anything to help us locate them. It’s a horrible feeling to know we were not able to keep our son safe when he went to school every day. He no longer goes to public school. Since then I have met approx. 20 families all over Florida with the same issue. We al wrote to every agency in Florida that we could think of and some outside of Florida (US Dept. of Justice) to ask for help. Not one person has come forward to help us so the abuse continues. We hear the same thing over and over “I’m sorry we have no authority over school districts.” I know there are a lot more families that don’t even know this is happening to their children.
“Especially since they’re supposed to be trained”
The problem is that they really are not trained. I have sought out experts in restraint holds asking them to demonstrate holds that do not utilize pain as the restraining factor. So far no one has given me a functional restraint that would work on me.
What I don’t understand is how all the school districts continue to get away with this. They are getting away with child abuse and we can’t stop them. If you are talking about restraint and seclusion in the public school system everyone looks the other way and will not get involved. If you did this to your child at home your child would be take away from you.
I have held my son against his will, sort of a backwards hug, and I regret it. The day I decided I would no longer restrain him to calm him (stupid thing to think, isn’t it?) was a freeing day for both of us. That’s not to say I havn’t held his hand to stop him from hitting etc., but surely full body restraints are unecessary and damaging to a child.
@S.L.
Of course let me know if you move! Things really vary from district to district here in NJ—even a couple of miles makes a difference.
My son has always been big for his age. It was about 3 years ago—he was 7 or so—–that I realized that he would soon be stronger and more powerful than me. Ever since, I’ve tried to teach myself how to deal with his “behaviors” (not a great word, I know), especially when he gets physical (which I think happens because he just loses control in anger, frustration, anxiety).
Seeing how he used to—-still does occasionally—-pretend to restrain himself is hard to observe, and makes it too clear for me of the unseen effects that restraints can have on a child.
As far as konw most parents don’t know much about what happens in school. They don’t understand when something like this happens all they see is one child but innreality there is always more than one child in the class and you need to react as quickly as possible. the teacher, Gina, probably had a lot of stituations like this but at that moment she had to do what she ahd to in order to keep the rest of the class safe. so by all means do what is needed to keep everything under control.
@lisa,
thank you for pointing that out—but if “most parents don’t know much about what happens in school,” I think this needs to be changed. Parents need to know and teachers need to have adequate supports, staffing and supervision to address these sorts of issues.