At least one disability advocacy group is now opposing a bill in Congress that they once championed after changes would allow restraint and seclusion to be included in students’ individualized education plans, or IEPs.
In an e-mail to members on Monday, the head of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, or COPAA – a 1,200 member organization of special education attorneys, advocates and parents — said the group opposes the legislation in its current form because of the IEP provision and would like members of Congress to reconsider.
“COPAA cannot support the current legislation because S.3895 permits restraint and locked seclusion as planned interventions in students’ education plans, including behavior plans and individualized education programs,” wrote the group’s executive director Denise Marshall. “By allowing restraint and locked seclusion as planned interventions, S.3895 weakens protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and legitimizes practices that the bill seeks to prevent.”
COPAA is one of a number of disability organizations that banded together in recent years to push for federal regulations governing the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. Collectively they lobbied successfully to get legislation approved by the House of Representatives in March that would limit the techniques to situations where there is imminent danger, while barring them from being included in students’ IEPs. (Read all of Disability Scoop’s coverage of restraint and seclusion >>)
But earlier this month a companion bill was reintroduced in the Senate with a controversial change, allowing restraint and seclusion to be included in IEPs for students if they have a two-year history of behaviors that create an “imminent danger of serious bodily injury in school.” The change was made in part to help garner bipartisan support for the measure while alleviating pushback from lobbyists working on behalf of the nation’s school administrators.
In the past, disability advocates have been staunchly opposed to including restraint and seclusion in IEPs, arguing that doing so makes the practices acceptable. However, representatives of The Alliance to Prevent Restraint, Aversive Interventions and Seclusion, or APRAIS — a coalition of 20 disability organizations, which COPAA is a part of — have said little since the new Senate bill was introduced. The group is expected to take a firm position soon.
As I said in my comment on the article about the Dept. of Education staying out of the restraint issue, I am concerned at the continued characterization of this amendment as being done at the behest of school administrators. I am one of a number of parents I know who have lobbied heavily for this amendment. My son fits precisely the exception that has been carved out — a multiple year history of aggression that has sent people to the hospital on numerous occasions. Thanks to an excellent behavior plan with positive behavioral supports, de-escalation techniques, and, yes, restraint by SOLVE-trained responders when he has an aggressive episode (defined as two or more aggressions within less than a minute), his aggressions have dropped from 40 a day to one every 6-8 weeks. When he is restrained by people who know what they are doing, he isn’t hurt and neither are they. In the past, when he was restrained by people who didn’t know what they were doing, he has been hurt, and so have they. His behavior plan says *only* trained people will restrain him. If this bill were to pass without this amendment, *anyone* could restrain him “in an emergency”. This amendment would keep him safe.
Positive Physical Restraint can be extraordinarily effective when applied by a fully-trained and objective
practitioner. To exclude physical restraint by a trained practitioner is to prevent the most effective approach with certain individuals. Here are a few guidelines: PR must never be used as punishment, PR must exclude threats, inuendos, preaching, name-calling and/or anger by the practitioner, PR must be recorded/reported, PR must be continued long enough in the session to accomplish a full release of fear and anger in the subject without making deals, agreements, bargaining, etc., in order to cease the PR, including a witness and/or video of the session is helpful for the record. The practitioner names the emotions being felt but without disapproval. The purpose of PR is NOT to stop the behavior; the goal is for the subject to be free of anxiety, fear and secondary anger (free from reactivity) so that the real, calm and collected personality can be evident. PR used correctly and therapeutically can accomplish in one hour what often takes half a year or longer. The key to usage is proper training so that the practitioner is objective, unthreatened, interacting provocatively therapeutic, and demonstrably effective. Don’t throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater (untrained bad actors). Require professional competence and pre-planning.
Restraint for safety is sometimes necessary, but anger, irritation, threats and bargaining are damaging in that the underlying fear is not addressed (merely controlling the subject’s fear by a greater threat from the untrained practitioner. A trained professional is unthreatened and objective, not emotionally reactive and irritated/angry. Doing what comes naturally is unprofessional, just self-centered discomfort in confronting what is perceived as undesirable behavior. Think of freeing the subject, not yourself.
Saturating the subject with emotional reflection is essential—so the practitioner must be able to reflect/name the various levels of sympathetic ANS state automatically and fluently.
In our state, regulations require a check on secluded subjects once a minute and a written report for every seclusion, including time-out. N.B., TimeOut by definition is not punishment and a care must be given in assuring that the context of the TimeOut is not punitive. Know your regulations and definitions. Develop professional-level skills.