The problem seems to be that there are so many loopholes in what NYS is proposing that parents will not, in practice, be in control of this. ANd that is what the law says HAS to happen. I have no problem, personally, in time-outs and restraints being used under certain circumstances with TRAINED personnel, but this law is like Swiss Cheese and the loopholes will make it far easier for just about anyone to use restraints and time-out rooms (padded cells) with our children WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION OR NOTIFICATION. I think that these disciplinary techniques may have a place, but if a child needs the use of them, I believe the parents should give informed permission and that the SPECIFICS need to be written into the IEP as part of an individual behavior intervention plan. Apparently, this won't be required. It's the UNINTENDED consquences of this law that is getting everyone riled. For example, if a child flaps and that bothers someone in the class, he could be physically dragged to a padded cell and left there all day. I'm not saying this will happen every time, but there are lots of untrained people out there would could injure the child or themselves and, worse, make the child's negative behaviors worse. The problem with NY's proposed aversives law (at the very least) is there are few safeguards to keep adults from outright abusing kids. It's not the intent of the law to allow abuse, but that could definitely be an unintended consquence.
So help me interpret this, tzoya. This is saying that in NY, aversive "things" are going to be permitted on all children, including those children protected by IDEA, even though it "flaty" goes agaisnt it? And am I interpretting it correctly to mean that they can be included in the BIP of students with disabilities and there has to be no persmission gained and without notifying the parent? And so this author is urging people with a stake in the matter in NY to call their contact and voice their opinion? Just wondering if I got the right idea from the all the law "lingo". If not, please correct me.
Personally and professionally, I don't know why any school staff would put their hands on a child without being trained in crisis de-escalation. Secondly, I don't know why school staff would do this and then NOT tell the parent. If I was a parent I wouldn't so much as want to know it happned as much as I would want to know the "whys" of the situation. Obviously physical restraints or the time out room should only be used in extreme situations when the child is hurting himself or others, but I do agree that even when done right, it only makes the behavior worse. It's not teaching the child anything, only keeping a potential situation from getting worse. But in my experience with physcial retraints ( haven't had any experience with time out rooms) the child does become louder and does not calm down right away. The only good thing I can see come out of a physical restraint is that when the child finally does calm down and released, hopefully him hurting himself or someone else has been diverted. Again, correct me if I am wrong.
This is really interesting to me. I don't know what my feelings are. I mean, in a way, I am not sure that I would want my own personal child restrained or put in a time out room at school. But on the other hand, I do see the need for it. Or for something. I dont' see the point in calling the parent to come get the child instead of handling it at school, but at the same time, if it were my child, I don't know that I would rather be called to come pick them up instead of him being physically restrained or kept in the time out room. I guess I see both sides to this. But as the teacher, I wouldn't want to do anything that was going to be a potential "problem" between a parent or with a violation of ANY law, much less IDEA. Am I making sense?
This was posted on an autism listserv I get from a very well-known education lawyer in NY and she asked that it be circulated widely. If you are in NY, contact your legislators:
Fyi
PLEASE FORWARD/CIRCULATE WIDELY WITHOUT FURTHER PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR:
The NYSED Regents are scheduled to vote at their Jan. 8-9 meeting to approve, and make final, NYSED's proposed amended aversives regulations.
These regulations are still a horror, and still authorize use of behavior control methods on kids with disabilities which the US Dept. of Health & Human Services says is like to lead to "trauma, injury and sometimes deaths." The proposed amended regulations are at:
http://www.regents.
The most important - and dangerous - part of these regulations, which is carried over from the June 2006 "emergency" regulations in effect since then, still authorizes school personnel to use physical restraints and seclusionary time out rooms whenever a student with a disability disrupts a class (even if the "disruption" is an uncontrollable symptom of a disability, such as a verbal tic or autistic hand flapping); if the child engages in conduct which could involve bumping shoulders with another student in a hallway, or if the child destroys a school's crayon. And there are no meaningful requirements that staff who do these physical restraints have any training at all in behavioral crisis defusing; no requirements that staff be thoroughly trained in any research-validated methodology of crisis defusing and only if these don't work, in safe physical restraints.
There are no limits on how often a child can be locked into a seclusionary time out room and no constraints on how long a child of any particular age can be kept in such a room.
Where schools and programs, such as BOCES and many State-approved private schools, have uniform building codes of conduct, with uniform penalties including seclusionary time out rooms, parents must be notified that such policies exist, but their prior informed consent for such seclusion, is not required. This flatly violates the IDEA. Use of time out rooms for punishment on any person with a developmental disability in any NYS school is a clear violation of federal law. NYSED does not ask that it be notified when restraints, time out rooms or aversive behavioral interventions (a/k/a unpleasant or painful behavior control methods) are
used: NYSED does not ask that schools report to it when students are injured as a result of use of restraints, seclusion or aversives. And NYSED does not require that parents be immediately informed when these things are done to their children. While the regulations remove authorization for strangling and hurling, for example, and prohibit use of aversives on pre-school children, aversives in children's current IEP's will be allowed at least through 2009, and possibly thereafter.
NYSED knows that these regulations are illegal. The NYCLU, NYS Psychological Association and Coalition for Transparency in Public Education all submitted comments stating that these regulations flatly violated 42 USC
15009 (one of the federal laws which protect persons of all ages with developmental disabilities, including mental retardation and autism):
citations to federal laws, federal regulations, federal agency policy statements, an amicus brief the US Dept. of Justice filed on behalf of Health & Human Services and the US DOE, and a recent 2nd Circuit decision were included in these organizations' written comments. However, in its "Assessment of Public Comment," NYSED wrote that only one lone individual cited this statute in opposing the proposed aversives regulation, and claimed that this person's comment included no relevant citations to law, court decisions or federal agency oversight materials. In other words, NYSED simply totally misrepresented the comment it received which documents that these aversives regulations clearly violate important federal protective laws. Disabled children deserve something better than official mis-statements justifying abusive treatment in schools.
I am informed that approval of these regulations is a "done deal"
and that the Regents will pass them, then ask at some time in the future for "expert" testimony regarding their effectiveness or harmfulness. They already have expert testimony from the NYS Psychological Association - its taskforce on these regulations was composed of psychologists at the Ph.d.
level, who are behavior experts, some of whom are current NYS school psychologists. They already have testimony from the NYCLU mental health law expert attorney. They already have a tremendous amount of citations to research showing that these aversives, restraints and seclusionary time out rooms do not work! Anywhere! And NYSED has provided no citations to research showing that its aversives, restraints and seclusionary time out rooms work in schools - because there are none! One of the articles for which they were given citations actually shows that when NYS certified "expert" special education teachers used restraints on their students routinely, it was ineffective and actually made the kids' behaviors worse, not better. And how can anyone provide "expert" testimony to the Regents about the uses - and abuses - of these aversives, restraints and seclusionary time out rooms in NY schools when NYSED is not asking schools to report on their use, nor on injuries or other harms which disabled children suffer as a result of their use? So if a child is seriously hurt, or even killed, due to use of these aversives, restraints and/or seclusionary time out rooms, NYSED's in-house "experts" wouldn't talk about them because they don't want know about them. See no evil ... To make things even worse, NYSED writes that they want to "delete proposed qualifications for individuals who develop BIPs."
It is not too late to undo the "done deal." You should contact your Regent immediately - contact information can be found at:
http://www.regents.
If you don't act now ... you might as well not act at all. Let's start
2007 off right for these kids. NYSED obviously doesn't care about their safety and welfare: so you'll have to be there for them.
Dee Alpert, Publisher
SpecialEducationMuc