An association for people with intellectual disabilities has called for regulations to govern the use of restraint and seclusion practices on children in schools across the country.
Inclusion Ireland says schoolchildren with disabilities are "at a real risk of physical and emotional harm" because untrained staff are using these methods, in the absence of any policy or guidance or reporting framework.
Inclusion Ireland has published a report today that documents the experiences of 14 children subjected in recent years to restraint or seclusion in educational settings.
In one account, a parent describes how their son was restrained on a school bus "with his head held down physically for the whole journey, which took 20 minutes".
The parent goes on to report that their child described pain and difficulty breathing during the ordeal.
In the report, Inclusion Ireland points out that the National Council for Special Education has asked three times in recent years for guidelines to be introduced; in 2012, in 2016, and again this year in its review of the Special Needs Assistant scheme.
In that review, the NCSE criticised the fact that Special Needs Assistants without specialist training were being tasked with supporting children with "challenging behaviours".
It called for "immediate action", and warned of "very serious consequences for students and staff".
Addressing an Oireachtas committee last June, Inclusion Ireland Chairperson Lorraine Dempsey, warned that Ireland was "one step away from the death of a child" due to the use of inappropriate methods of restraint.
She was referring to the use of techniques such as "prone restraint", when a person is held face down, which if done incorrectly can lead to suffocation.
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Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Ms Dempsey said these children have experienced deep trauma as a result of their treatment.
She said there is no monitoring, regulation or oversight of the use of restraint and seclusion practices being used on children in schools across the country.
Ms Dempsey called on the Department of Education to implement regulations as a matter of urgency, pointing out such oversight already exists in the mental health sector.
Inclusion Ireland has called on the Department of Education to tightly prescribe the use of restrictive practices and to issue guidelines to ensure that restraint and seclusion are only used to protect children or other people, and not as a form of punishment.
It says some parents whose children have been subjected to these practices are afraid to speak out.
The report says that parents complain that in some cases, when state agencies became aware of an incident involving a child "they were either unable or unwilling to tell a school to cease these practices".
These state agencies include the child welfare agency Tusla, the Department of Education, the National Educational Psychological Service, and the National Council for Special Education.
Inclusion Ireland says that some children have been forced to leave their schools when their parents refused to agree to allow the use of restraint or seclusion techniques.
In some cases children have become too fearful of returning to school after an incident involving restraint or seclusion. The report says this is restricting the rights of these children to an education.
Read Inclusion Ireland report in full
One parent described how their nine-year-old child became too afraid to return to school after multiple seclusions (The names of the children have been changed):
"Liam was forcibly held and taken to a padded room where he was locked on his own numerous times in his special school. One day I was even locked into the room when I went to get him out. Liam told me that when he is being brought into the room ‘my feet do not touch the ground’.
"On one day he had nail marks on his arm and on another day bruising, which he said were caused by staff getting him into the room. He repeated all of this to Tusla who closed the case with no finding against the school. When I requested his file from school I was shocked to find he had been put into seclusion numerous times that I did not know about. Liam is now scared of school and has been out for a year."
Another parent described the use of restraint on their son, and its impact:
"One day I went to collect Brian from his special school and he was sitting on the sofa in reception crying. His arms were very sore and staff would not tell me what happened. Later Brian calmed down and could tell me two Special Needs Assistants had held him face down on the floor by his arms which were now black and blue.
"Even though there was CCTV in the school they could not provide it to me as it had ‘self-erased’. Both of us were so upset he could never go back to the school. After this incident he suffered from panic attacks, depression and lost trust in all adults for a time. He even said he wanted to kill himself."
Inclusion Ireland says it believes unregulated restraint and seclusion is taking place across all kinds of school settings in Ireland, including in mainstream classes, special classes, as well as special schools.
It says while in health and social care settings such practices are monitored by State agencies, there is no policy or guidance in the education sector. It points out that training in crisis intervention or prevention strategies is compulsory in other sectors, such as mental health.
The report says that Ireland is lagging behind other jurisdictions, which provide guidelines on the use of restraint techniques, as well as the monitoring and training of staff.
One parent described how their ten-year-old son was secluded in an empty classroom:
"Michael ... wasn't allowed in the classroom of his Dublin school for three months. Instead, Michael had to work in an empty room next door to the room where his class-mates were working. The Special Needs Assistant would come in to do 15 minutes of reading with him and check on him regularly.
"In the next year, I found out from another student that Michael was not allowed into the classroom, that he was doing his work alone in a room. He had been there for a month before this student had told me. Michael hadn’t wanted to tell me as he was ashamed. No staff informed me. Staff said they checked on him every ten minutes, my son says it was much longer."
Another parent described how their son was locked into a toilet:
"Luke attended a special school and he told me that his teacher had locked him into a toilet. The school denied this when I complained. We moved him to another school and a number of months later I was contacted by Tusla as two more children had alleged the teacher had locked them into a toilet. An investigation followed but found that the teacher posed no risk to children and the teacher returned to the school. In the new school the teacher was great and he was doing well, until a change in teacher who would put my son into a ‘withdrawal or seclusion’ room for minor issues.
"He would become highly distressed by the confinement and react negatively, which led to more seclusion. He was then put on a short school day, which meant he missed a cumulative 100 days of school that year. The fallout from this practice eventually led to the breakdown of his school placement. He is now home-schooled."
Inclusion Ireland says it is impossible to say how many children are affected because of the lack of any legal obligation to report such practices.
Criticising this, its report says: "This means that there is little or no data available on how frequently these practices occur in schools, why they are used, or their impact on children or staff."
The Department of Education has told RTÉ News that it is "currently working on the development of guidelines for schools".
In a statement, it said that it would consult with stakeholders before finalising this work.
It said the proposed guidelines would be developed "to assist schools’ in responding in circumstances where students pose an immediate threat of harm to themselves or others".
It said the guidelines "will be underpinned by the principles that such intervention is never used for the purposes of discipline".
