How can I - as a parent - help prevent restraint & seclusion in my local schools? By speaking up!
Here's a sample email you can send to your local school board, principal, and superintendent educating them on the dangers of restraint & seclusion and the alternatives available to them. If your child - or your child's classmate - has been restrained or secluded at school and you don't think it's right, then just let them know how you feel - there is power in numbers, so parents, please speak up!
SAMPLE EMAIL:
I write to you all as a
concerned District ___ parent regarding what I view as a disturbing and
financially inadvisable situation in our schools, namely, the use of restraint
and seclusion of our children (especially those with disabilities). I would
respectfully request that we seriously consider spending our limited funds on
positive methods of behavior management rather than aversive techniques that
are dangerous, abusive, and ineffective.
In my experience, I have
found that for kids with disabilities, behavior is communication. When students appear to be misbehaving or
having a meltdown, they are usually in fact uncomfortable, bored, scared, or
lacking in appropriate supports to engage meaningfully in the classroom
content. When misconstrued, often such
behavior triggers restrictive interventions (such as holding/restraints or
secluding/Time Out rooms – or whatever euphemism is currently in fashion)
rather than positive supports designed to de-escalate the situation to allow
the student to continue to participate in the general education environment.
In the mental health
field, restraint and seclusion are considered a “failure of treatment.” I
believe that similarly, in the education field, restraint and seclusion
represent a “failure of education.”
As the U.S. Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (www.samhsa.gov) has recognized, there is an excellent business case
to be made against the use of restraint and seclusion (as opposed to positive
behavior supports and interventions). See The Business Case for Reducing and
Eliminating Restraint and Seclusion http://store.samhsa.gov/product/SMA11-4632. Moreover,
there are viable alternatives to seclusion – see, e.g., the website of
Dr. Laura Riffel (http://www.behaviordoctor.org , whose advice on alternatives to seclusion was
recently published by LRP Publications, a school-based organization. (I have pasted her LRP article at the end of
this email.)
Equally important,
positive behavior supports are research-based (unlike the use of
restraints/seclusion) AND have been granted “most favorable intervention
status” under federal and state law. See Positive Behavior Support and the
Law (http://www.pbis.org/school/pbis_and_the_law/default.aspx). See also generally http://www.pbis.org and http://www.apbs.org for the strong research base underlying positive behavior approaches
with this population. In other words,
both federal and state law require the consideration and favor the
implementation of positive behavior supports in schools.
On the other hand, there
are numerous risks to staff and children when restraints and seclusion are utilized. For instance, children in seclusion have been
known to urinate or defecate on themselves and/or to injure themselves in their
desperate struggles to get out (a number of children have died while in
seclusion). This raises not only safety,
but public health, concerns in the use of these rooms.
The U.S. Department of
Education has recently issued its own resource packet strongly discouraging the
practices of restraint & seclusion, encouraging the use of positive
behavior supports instead. See http://www2.ed.gov/policy/seclusion/index.html.
Finally, I would direct
your attention to the page on Our Children Left Behind’s website that collects
information on the dangers of restraint, seclusion, and other aversive
techniques to schools and staff. http://www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com/restraint.htm.
Thank you for considering
my views, and please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss this further. I
can be reached at ___________.
Sincerely,
Recognize alternatives to
seclusion
By Laura Riffel*
My team and I recently worked with a K-12 alternative school that used its
seclusion room 47 times per day. Using data, we found that every incident
occurred within 5 minutes of coming back from a high-energy transition, such as
physical education or lunch.
Knowing heart rates go up prior to aggressive acts, we decided to try an
experiment. We did these three things:
· Dimmed the lights by turning off the overhead and putting a lamp with a
60-watt bulb on the teacher's desk. (Fluorescent lights set off behavior in
some students.)
· Played music with 60 beats per minute for three minutes (a resting heart
rate).
· Put a thought-provoking question on the board. (For example: What is the
square root of 16?) One month later, we looked at our data and we had only two
students who exhibited aggressive behaviors. We put intensive behavior
intervention plans in place for those students and their need for time in the
seclusion room decreased. Students sometimes still chose to use the room to
calm down, but they no longer had to be forced into the room.
Take these steps instead of relying on seclusion to manage student behavior:
1. Determine the antecedent: When are the behaviors showing up? There
are always patterns to behavior. The triggers might be invisible to us at
first, but they are usually there if we just look. These are some of the more
common triggers we have found:
· Time of day.
· Day of the week.
· Certain subjects.
· Certain activities or work tasks. Day of the week.
· Certain subjects.
· Certain activities or work tasks.
· Boredom -- too much downtime.
· Transitions.
· Certain smells.
· Certain people being near or absent.
2. Replace the challenging behavior: The tantrum behavior has been
learned and rewarded, so you have to decide what you want the student to do
instead. You can't just say, "Be good." You have to be specific. You
can teach this behavior with video self-modeling, which involves filming the
student engaging in a replacement behavior. You can also use PowerPoint relationship
narratives, which feature slides of a student exhibiting the appropriate
behavior. Just remember it will take time. I believe about one month of
intervention for every year a behavior has been in place is a good rule of
thumb. I like to use the TIPP method: Teach the new behavior.
· Imprint the new behavior by modeling it.
· Practice the new behavior. What does it look like? What does it sound
like? What does it feel like?
· Praise the new behavior. Use specific praise. Say more than,
"Good job." Try, "Notice how you're sitting in your chair and
raising your hand and waiting to be called on? That's exactly what we are
looking for. Way to go!"
3. Consequence
modification: How are you going
to act differently? The biggest factor in changing student behavior is in
changing our own behavior. In the alternative school I mentioned, staff totally
changed how they did business. They lost three minutes of class time every time
the students had a high-energy transition; however, they gained hours of
academic time that were not lost to students leaving the room because of
meltdowns. This is applied behavior analysis -- giving energy to the
appropriate behavior and extinguishing the inappropriate behavior by not giving
it any energy. If we spend our energy on giving students attention for their
appropriate behaviors, we will see fewer students using inappropriate behaviors
to get attention.
Because of all of the
advances in technology, students get less and less face time. But this is
exactly what you need to offer to reduce disruptions in the classroom. Research
supports using these strategies when you greet students at the door each day:
Use eye contact.
· Talk to them about something personal, such as a new haircut or shirt.
· Use their name in a positive way, such as, "Great to see you today,
John."
· Use a form of touch that school policy allows and students accept, such as a
high five, fist bump, elbow bump, or pinkie swear.
May 2, 2012
Copyright 2012©
LRP Publications
