‘HIDDEN TO MOST PEOPLE’
Group launches study of school time-out rooms
A lack of provincial data on school seclusion rooms has prompted a non-profit organization to survey parents about the use of restraint and isolation in schools.
Posted Friday, the online survey is the first effort by Inclusion Alberta to find out how often students are locked in time-out rooms and for how long. Many students who end up in the rooms have developmental disabilities or behavioural disorders.
“We want to try to get as complete a picture as possible of something that, in fact, has been hidden to most people in this province that has not yet been addressed,” Inclusion Alberta’s CEO emeritus, Bruce Uditsky, said.
The room goes by many names, including isolation room, seclusion room, time-out room, safe room, or calm room.
Institutions use them to either give an out-of-control person a place to calm down, or as a punishment for their behaviour, said Dick Sobsey, University of Alberta professor emeritus in educational psychology.
There hasn’t been much research on whether the rooms are effective at changing students’ behaviour, he said in a Friday interview.
There are often more effective ways of calming or diverting people having an outburst, he said. If the rooms are being used correctly, and staff are beholden to good guidelines, the rooms are rarely used, he said.
Although Alberta’s education minister said isolation rooms should only be used as a “last resort,” Inclusion Alberta staff has heard of children locked in the rooms for hours, or on multiple occasions, CEO Trish Bowman said.
School districts are free from reporting requirements on using the rooms, and provincial guidelines on their use are not enforced, Uditsky said.
“Locking and leaving children with disabilities neglected and abandoned in seclusion or isolation rooms is a form of abuse and violence that needs to end immediately,” Bowman said Friday. “No child should go to school with this threat looming over them.”
FAMILIES TRAUMATIZED
To demonstrate the potential harm of seclusion rooms, parents Marcy Oakes and Warren Henschel tearfully told reporters Friday about alleged actions by staff at a Sherwood Park public school in 2015. In a lawsuit, they allege staff locked their son with autism, then 12, inside a room naked, where they later found him covered with his own feces.
The Elk Island district said Thursday it will vigorously defend its staff in court. A statement of defence filed by the defendants was with a judge and unavailable for public viewing Friday.
Edmonton parent Angela McNair is also wary of isolation rooms after she took her six-year-old son Rowan on a school visit two weeks ago. Rowan, who has autism spectrum disorder, Tourette syndrome, sensory processing disorder and other disabilities, was anxious and acting aggressively when McNair took him to visit the teacher at a public school on Aug. 31.
The boy got into a verbal and physical tussle with the teacher, who briefly put the boy inside an isolation room, McNair said Thursday. It eroded her trust in the school, and now she’s not sure where Rowan will go for Grade 1.
Since the conflict, Rowan has become leery of his respite workers and doesn’t want to leave the house, she said. It scares McNair to think school staff can force children into an isolated room without parental permission.
“It bothers me,” she said. “These are special needs children. They have a diagnosis.”
A LAST RESORT
Edmonton Public Schools calls the rooms “timeout space,” and the school district is reviewing how staff use them, spokeswoman Carrie Rosa said in an email Friday.
The district has “behaviour and learning assistance” programs at 36 schools, and “most” of the programs have a timeout space, Rosa said.
The rooms are a last resort option to “give the student a chance to regain control of their emotions and actions in a safe environment,” she said. Biting, kicking, punching or throwing furniture present a risk to others, she said.
Staff must document all timeout space use in a logbook, and staff must supervise children in the rooms. Staff must be able to see the students inside, and the doors cannot lock, district guidelines say.
She wouldn’t comment on McNair’s situation for privacy reasons, except to say that’s not how they wanted the school year to start for the student or staff.
One of 96 Edmonton Catholic schools has two rooms the district calls “safe rooms,” spokeswoman Lori Nagy said in a Friday email. Two trained professionals must supervise children while they are in safe rooms, she said. The doors do not lock unless a staff member is holding onto the handle.
Staff only put children in the rooms during emergencies when their behaviour is “extremely serious,” and are released as soon as any dangerous behaviour stops, she said. Staff must follow strict guidelines and complete a critical incident report each time they put a student in the room.