Children forced into cell-like school seclusion rooms

[Guest guest]

Children forced into cell-like school seclusion rooms

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html#cnnSTCVideo **

- Story Highlights

- Mentally disabled, autistic kids injured, traumatized in school

seclusion rooms

- 13-year-old Georgia boy hanged himself in room with cord teacher gave

him

- Autistic Iowa girl confined in school storage closet where she pulled

out her hair

December 17, 2008 - By Fantz CNN

*MURRAYVILLE, Georgia (CNN) *-- A few weeks before 13-year-old King

killed himself, he told his parents that his teachers had put him in

" time-out. "

[image: The room where King hanged himself is shown after his

death. It is no longer used, a school official said.]

The room where King hanged himself is shown after his death. It is

no longer used, a school official said.

" We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few

minutes, " Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child

she called " our baby ... a good kid. "

But time-out in the boy's north Georgia special education school was spent

in something akin to a prison cell -- a concrete room latched from the

outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper.

Called a seclusion room, it's where in November 2004, hanged

himself with a cord a teacher gave him to hold up his pants. [image: Video]

*Watch 's parents on their son's death

»*<http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html#cnnSTCVideo>

An attorney representing the school has denied any wrongdoing.

Seclusion rooms, sometimes called time-out rooms, are used across the

nation, generally for special needs children. Critics say that along with

the death of , many mentally disabled and

*autistic*<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/autism>children have been

injured or traumatized.

Few states have laws on using seclusion rooms, though 24 states have written

guidelines, according to a 2007 study conducted by a *Clemson

University*<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/clemson_university>researcher.

Texas, which was included in that study, has stopped using seclusion and

restraint. *Georgia* <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/georgia> has just begun

to draft guidelines, four years after 's death.

Based on conversations with officials in 22 states with written guidelines,

seclusion is intended as a last resort when other attempts to calm a child

have failed or when a student is hurting himself or others.

Michigan requires that a child held in seclusion have constant supervision

from an instructor trained specifically in special education, and that

confinement not exceed 15 minutes.

Connecticut education spokesman Tom said " time-out rooms " were used

sparingly and were " usually small rooms with padding on the walls. "

Only Vermont tracks how many children are kept in seclusion from year to

year, though two other states, Minnesota and New Mexico, say they have been

using the rooms less frequently in recent years.

Dr. , New Mexico's education secretary, said her state had

found more sophisticated and better ways to solve behavior problems. ,

whose brother is autistic, said, " The idea of confining a child in a room

repeatedly and as punishment, that's an ethics violation I would never

tolerate. "

But researchers say that the rooms, in some cases, are being misused and

that children are suffering.

Public schools in the United States are now educating more than half a

million more students with

*disabilities*<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/disabilities>than they did

a decade ago, according to the National Education Association.

" Teachers aren't trained to handle that, " said Dr. Pierangelo,

executive director of the National Association of Special Education

Teachers.

" When you have an out-of-control student threatening your class -- it's not

right and it can be very damaging -- but seclusion is used as a 'quick fix'

in many cases. "

Former Rhode Island special education superintendent told CNN

that she thought she was helping a disabled fifth-grader by keeping him in a

" chill room " in the basement of a public elementary school that was later

deemed a fire hazard.

" All I know is I tried to help this boy, and I had very few options, "

said. After the public learned of the room, she resigned from her post with

the department but remains with the school.

School records do not indicate why King was repeatedly confined to

the concrete room or what, if any, positive outcome was expected.

His parents say they don't recognize the boy described in records as one who

liked to kick and punch his classmates. They have launched a wrongful death

lawsuit against the school -- the Alpine Program in Gainesville -- which has

denied any wrongdoing. A Georgia judge is expected to rule soon on whether

the case can be brought before a jury.

's parents say the boy had been diagnosed since kindergarten with

severe depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. But his

father remembers him as a boy who was happy when he sang in the church

choir.

" He was a hugger, liked to go fishing with me and run after me saying,

'Daddy, when are we going to the lake?' " Don King said.

King said that he wanted to know if there were similar situations in other

schools and that critics of seclusion rooms fear there could be.

" 's case is the worst of the worst, but it should be a warning. It's

reasonable to think that it could happen in all the other schools that use

seclusion on disabled children -- largely because the use of seclusion goes

so unchecked, " said Jane Hudson, an attorney with the National Disability

Rights Network.

" This is one of those most unregulated, unresearched areas I've come

across, " said ph , a Clemson University special education researcher

who has worked in schools for disabled kids and co-authored a study on the

use of seclusion.

" You have very little oversight in schools of these rooms -- first because

the general public doesn't really even know they exist, " he said.

There is no national database tracking seclusion incidents in schools,

though many have been described in media reports, lawsuits, disability

advocacy groups' investigations and on blogs catering to parents who say

their child had been held in seclusion.

Disability Rights California, a federally funded watchdog group, found that

teachers dragged children into seclusion rooms they could not leave. In one

case, they found a retarded 8-year-old had been locked alone in a seclusion

room in a northeast California elementary school for at least 31 days in a

year.

" What we found outrageous was that we went to the schools and asked to see

the rooms and were denied, " said on, a psychiatric nurse and

attorney who led the 2007 investigation that substantiated at least six

cases of abuse involving seclusion in public schools.

" It took a lot of fighting to eventually get in to see where these children

were held. "

CNN asked every school official interviewed if a reporter could visit a

seclusion room and was denied every time.

In other instances of alleged abuse:

• A Tennessee mother alleged in a federal suit against the Learn Center in

Clinton that her 51-pound 9-year-old autistic son was bruised when school

instructors used their body weight on his legs and torso to hold him down

before putting him in a " quiet room " for four hours. Principal Houck of

the Learn Center, which serves disabled children, said lawyers have advised

him not to discuss the case.

• Eight-year-old Isabel Loeffler, who has autism, was held down by her

teachers and confined in a storage closet where she pulled out her hair and

wet her pants at her Dallas County, *Iowa*<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/iowa>,

elementary school. Last year, a judge found that the school had violated the

girl's rights. " What we're talking about is trauma, " said her father, Doug

Loeffler. " She spent hours in wet clothes, crying to be let out. " Waukee

school district attorney Matt Novak told CNN that the school has denied any

wrongdoing.

• A mentally retarded 14-year-old in Killeen, Texas, died from his teachers

pressing on his chest in an effort to restrain him in 2001. Texas passed a

law to limit both restraint and seclusion in schools because the two methods

are often used together.

Federal law requires that schools develop behavioral plans for students with

disabilities. These plans are supposed to explicitly explain behavior

problems and methods the teacher is allowed to use to stop it, including

using music to calm a child or allowing a student to take a break from

schoolwork.

A behavioral plan for King, provided to CNN by the Kings' attorney,

shows that was confined in the seclusion room on 15 separate days

for infractions ranging from cursing and threatening other students to

physically striking classmates.

" Sandy " Addis, the director of the Pioneer education agency which

oversees Alpine, said that the room where died is no longer in use.

Citing the ongoing litigation, he declined to answer questions about the

King case but defended the use of seclusion for " an emergency safety

situation. "

The Alpine Program's attorney, Phil Hartley, said 's actions leading

up to his suicide did not suggest the boy was " serious " about killing

himself. 's actions were an " effort to get attention, " Hartley said.

" This is a program designed for students with severe emotional disabilities

and problems, " he said. " It is a program which frequently deals with

students who use various methods of getting attention, avoiding work. "

A substitute employee placed in charge of watching the room on the day

died said in an affidavit that he had no training in the use of

seclusion, and didn't know had threatened suicide weeks earlier.

The Kings say they would have removed their son from the school if they knew

he was being held in seclusion, or that he had expressed a desire to hurt

himself.

" We would have home schooled him or taken him to another psychologist, " said

Don King. " If we would have known, our boy would have never been in that

room. He would still be alive. "

The story

A few weeks before 13-year-old King killed himself, he told his

parents that his teachers had put him in " time-out. "

" We thought that meant go sit in the corner and be quiet for a few minutes, "

Tina King said, tears washing her face as she remembered the child she

called " our baby ... a good kid. "

But time-out in the boy's north Georgia special education school was spent

in something akin to a prison cell -- a concrete room latched from the

outside, its tiny window obscured by a piece of paper. *Read full

article

»*<http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/17/seclusion.rooms/index.html#cnnSTCText>

--

Ari Ne'eman

President

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network

1660 L Street, NW, Suite 700

Washington, DC 20036

http://www.autisticadvocacy.org