Death at School: Parents Protest Dangerous Discipline for Autistic, Disabled Kids

[The Straight Story]

Death at School: Parents Protest Dangerous Discipline for Autistic, Disabled Kids

Thousands of autistic and disabled schoolchildren have been injured and dozens have died after being restrained by poorly trained teachers and school aides who tried to subdue them using at times unduly harsh techniques, an ABC News investigation has found.

With no agreed upon national standards for how teachers can restrain an unruly child, school officials around the country have been employing a wide array of methods that range from sitting on children, to handcuffing them, even jolting them with an electric shock at one specialized school. Some have locked children in padded rooms for hours at a time. One Kentucky teacher's aide is alleged to have stuffed 9-year-old Christopher Baker, who is autistic and was swinging a chair around him, into a draw-string duffle bag.

"When I got to the end of the hall and saw the bag, I stood there like, 'Hmmm, what in the world?'" the boy's mother, Sandra Baker, recalled in an interview with ABC News. She had arrived at the school to find her son wriggling inside the "sensory bag." "It was really heartbreaking to walk up and see him in that."

Earlier this year, Sheila Foster's son Corey, 16, was the latest child to die at school, when staff members at a special needs facility in Yonkers, New York held him face down for allegedly refusing to get off the basketball court. Sheila Foster said witnesses later informed her that Corey told the staffers he couldn't breathe, but they allegedly persisted, reportedly telling him, "If you can talk, you can breathe." The school said this account is not substantiated.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/death-school-parents-protest-dangerous-discipline-autistic-disabled/story?id=17702216#.ULeHc6np4Vt

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. I work with the disabled.

Yesterday, my two co-workers and I watched an online news report about an "isolation booth" used by the special ed department of the Longview Wa school district.

All three of us are parents of autistic teens, and we all had the same view; "whatever works, provided the parents know, and the staff is trained in the principles of its appropriate use for behavior modification"

Sensory materials are well-proven therapies, usually using weighted materials. Many adults with autism have told me that it was to them as children. I'm unfamiliar with a "draw-string bag" used for this purpose, but I've seen enough distortion about this stuff that I'm wary to accept the report without seeing what he's talking about.

There's no book. There's no set of instructions. What works for neurotypical children probably won't work for a child with autism, and what works for one autistic child (to manage behaviors) won't work for all autistic children.

[liberal_at_heart]

2. it's the training part that is usually severely lacking

Not only training in how to use sensory materials but also in controlling ones emotions when dealing with the disabled. You have to have a lot of patience when working with the disabled. Even when they are misbehaving you can't lose your cool. You have to be trained to follow procedure and to take the appropriate steps to resolve the situation.