Saturday, October 10, 2015

Restraint and Seclusion (because I cannot use swear words as a title)

      This one may be a bit hard to write.  Not that I can't prattle on about damn near anything, but because it's hard to write about this subject with resorting to swear words and banging my head off the keyboard.  Both of which actions make the spellcheck/autocorrect feature lose it's little mind.  (Last time it had to be talked down from a ledge. It doesn't appreciate the way I spell swear words and guttural shrieks.)  But I want to talk about restraint and seclusion in schools. 
       Disabled children can be stubborn.  (Ok, let's be honest they make stubborn into an art form. They have to or they wouldn't survive and thrive.)   That, along with trouble in communication, often makes for sometimes erratic and uncontrolled behavior.  Having said that.  THESE ARE CHILDREN FOR F'S SAKE. We expect children in general to behave better than adults (When is the last time you were given a time out for swearing or being cross or acting selfishly, hmm????)  We seem to expect disabled children to be passive little tiny tim's with never a bad moment or cross word for anyone.  And frankly, we are all jerks for doing so.   So why oh why do we have these god awful restraint and seclusion policies for disabled children in schools?   I can understand a meltdown is hard to deal with but guess what folks, that's why we adults have all the power and money and cooler toys and no bedtimes.  We deal with the hard stuff.  I could possibly see removing a child until the meltdown is over (which by the way is NOT a temper tantrum, learn the difference or just shut up already.  You're not cool and adult when you spout mean nonsense.  You're just mean, Madame Umbridge, so pipe down.)  Disabled children are more often punished and more harshly punished than their more typical peers for the SAME infractions.  It's not about them.  It's about we adults being cruel.  So to that end New York State is investigating the use of restraint and seclusion in schools.  The following is from my local Independent Living Center's  newsletter. Much thanks to STIC for the permission to use! 
       From AccessAbility, the newsletter of the Southern Tier Independence Center :
Disability Rights New York, the official New York State Protection and Advocacy Agency for people with disabilities is investigating inappropriate use of restraints or time out rooms in schools across the state. They are seeking information on recent cases: those that occurred during the previous school year or earlier this fall. 
    If you report a case DRNY, they will help you to decide "next steps which may include accessing the school and student records or filing a complaint with NYSED, or a range of other options"  They will protect your identity if that's what you want.
     Julie Keegan, Surpervising Attorney for the developmental disabilities P&A program at DRNY, said, " Assessing what's happening or not happening in actual cases provides an important context for the survey information we collected last fall (we had over 300 responses!). I would really appreciate you help in this effort. It will make a big difference in this very problematic area of behavior invention."
Contact Julie at:
(518)432-7861 voice
(518)512-3448 TTY
(800) 993-8982 toll free
(518) 427-6561 FAX

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