Minister appoints group to draft school seclusion guidelines
An new eight-member working group will make recommendations to Alberta’s education minister by December on how seclusion is used in schools.
The group of parents, health professionals and teachers are tasked with drafting new guidelines and identifying best practices on how schools should use isolation rooms, restraint and timeouts.
“It’s my view that seclusion rooms should only be used as a last resort and with student safety as the top priority,” Eggen said in a written statement Friday. “I’m confident that this group of parents, teachers, and experts will be able to come to a consensus on these guidelines.”
Eggen had said he wanted to see changes “within weeks” to the existing guidelines.
The issue of confining students came to the fore in September when a Sherwood Park student and his parents sued the Elk Island public school board and staff at Clover Bar School. The family alleges staff locked a 12-year-old boy with autism naked in an isolation room for at least 45 minutes, where he became covered in feces.
The allegations have not been proven in court. In a statement of defence, the school board denied the boy ’s rights were violated, and denied he suffered any losses or damages in the incident.
The boy’s parents, Marcy Oakes and Warren Henschel, spoke about their case as the organization Inclusion Alberta launched a first-of-itskind survey to gather information about the use of isolation rooms across the province. Oakes is also on the minister’s working group.
More than 600 people responded to the survey, Inclusion Alberta CEO Trish Bowman said on Friday — a number she found “alarming.”
Some families said children were put into seclusion daily or weekly, she said. Most often, the children were between the ages of five and 10, and the stories came from school districts all over the province, Bowman said.
Inclusion Alberta believes isolation rooms shouldn’t be used. Any school that’s used isolation more than once should re-evaluate its practices, she said.