Thousands of kids put in restraints or seclusion each year in Virginia schools

Jeff Schwaner , Julia Fair | The News Leader

Strapped to a chair at the arms and legs. A hood pulled over your head.

For Virginia parents, a state investigation's findings earlier this year on the treatment of immigrant teens in a detention center was a wake up call.

The use of physical restraint, mechanical restraints and seclusion on children shocked many; but investigators concluded that abuse did not occur, because such treatment is within legal guidelines in Virginia.

What many parents did not realize is that much of the same use of restraint and seclusion — including strapping teenagers to chairs and locking them in seclusion rooms — is also allowed in public schools throughout the Commonwealth.

In the 2013-2014 school year, public school students in the state were restrained more than 6,000 times. They were strapped to chairs, physically restrained or placed into seclusion. This is according to the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, the only source of comprehensive data about the use of restraint in the nation’s public schools.

Virginia is not alone. During the 2015–16 school year, the nation's public school students were physically restrained, mechanically restrained or secluded 122,000 times. In nearly 86,000 of those instances, students were subjected to physical or mechanical restraint, and in 36,000 were subjected to seclusion, according to the data collection.

The vast majority of those students were in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act programs, according to the civil rights data collection.

And in fact, since January 2016 there have been three confirmed incidents of restraint at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind, according to VSDB Superintendent Pat Trice.

Restraint happens among at-risk youth. The News Leader requested information from the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center and The Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents on the number of incidents of restraint and seclusion at those facilities.

While teenagers in both facilities continue their studies under special supervision, a separate set of laws and regulations enable restraint and seclusion of its residents.

What's surprising is what little difference there is between restraint allowed in those special circumstances and in our public schools.

At institutions such as the Commonwealth Center, the decision to use restraints or seclusion is a “clinical decision,” made by a medical professional — a doctor or psychiatrist.

But who makes those decisions in a public school in a crisis situation?

As it turns out, nobody is trained to carry out those policies.

Local school districts have restraint policies but take a different path to de-escalation



The News Leader requested information from all three local school districts on whether they had restraint equipment or space dedicated for seclusion in any of their facilities, as well as numbers and documentation for all incidents of restraint and seclusion over the last five school years.

Douglas Shifflett, assistant superintendent of Augusta County Public Schools, replied in an email that the district does not have any documents of incidents because “we do not use any of the methods you reference,” and noted that the school does not have any equipment or gear for restraint or dedicated space for seclusion.

But the county does in fact have a policy on restraint, section 7.560 of their policy manual. It’s a brief document that puts the district in line with guidelines proposed by the Virginia School Boards Association and set out in an appendix of a January 2015 report to the state Senate by the Virginia Commission on Youth.

Shifflett’s larger point is that the district’s training seeks to eliminate that risk altogether by following a different procedure, and for the five years of data the News Leader requested, the county reported no incidents of restraint or seclusion.

Shifflett wrote that the county uses the Mandt System, “a comprehensive, integrated approach to preventing, de-escalating, and if necessary, intervening when the behavior of an individual poses a threat of harm to themselves and/or others.”

“The focus of The Mandt System is on building healthy relationships between all the stakeholders in human service settings in order to facilitate the development of an organizational culture that provides the emotional, psychological, and physical safety needed in order to teach new behaviors to replace the behaviors that are labeled ‘challenging,’” wrote Shifflett in an email, providing boilerplate language also found on the reputable training system’s website.

The same method is used by Staunton City Schools, according to Brenda Lovekamp, administrative assistant to the superintendent.

Staunton responded to The News Leader’s request, confirming they had no incidents of restraint or seclusion in the past five school years. They also have a policy on restraint and seclusion.

The city does operate restraint equipment that can be part of Individualized Education Programs. “We provide support devices to assist students in maintaining safe and proper posture as directed by the IEPs,” Lovekamp said.

These types of restraint do not fall under the restraint requiring documentation of incidents. They do require consent. “All IEPs are implemented after signed consent from parents,” said Lovekamp.

IEPs are important parts of educational planning for students with special disabilities or needs.

For students with disabilities, occupational therapists and physical therapists “approve equipment, and parents agree to the use of equipment to provide support and safety restraint when agreeing to the annual IEP,” said Ryan Barber, Waynesboro Public Schools Director of Student Services, in that school division's response to the Leader.

The occupational and physical therapists "provide training for specialized seating to help students who have limited core strength. Students are not placed in seclusion,” Barber says. “The training is provided annually and whenever a new supportive device is agreed to by the IEP Team."

Waynesboro, like Staunton and Augusta County, avoided the use of restraint or seclusion though they also have a school policy in place.

“Our school division has not used restraint or seclusion in the last five years,” said Barber.

Barber also said there were no designated areas in school buildings for seclusion and restraint. “It’s not a practice we employ so areas are not designated.”

Waynesboro also subscribes to the Mandt System training. “The entire purpose of the (Mandt) training is to de-escalate situations and limit physical contact between our staff and students,” said Barber.

The Mandt System is used by 36 school districts state-wide, more than any other training system designed to de-escalate crisis situations, according to a 2015 Virginia Commission on Youth report.

In January 2015, the Commission presented a report to the governor and General Assembly. Its recommendations included introducing legislation (which passed in February of 2015) to standardize regulations to be consistent with the 2009 Department of Education Guidelines and U.S. Department of Education's 15 Principles on Seclusion and Restraint; and supporting "efforts on training appropriate parties, including School Resource Officers and School Security Officers, in student development, de-escalation, and conflict mediation in the school setting."

The Commission report recommended approving the Virginia School Boards Association draft policy on seclusion and restraint, and providing funding for additional training of de-escalation programs such as Mandt.

The Association policy draft appear to be the basis for all three local school districts' policies on Seclusion and Restraint.

Yet without equipment or training for the execution of such policies, the schools are not capable of applying any form of restraint in a crisis situation.

Meanwhile, local facilities that are fully trained for the use of restraint and seclusion are among the types of sites that have come under harsh national criticism for using these options too often and as punishment for behavior as opposed to a last option for preventing a student from harming themselves or others.

In our follow-up stories to this report, we'll dig deeper into questions of restraint and the law:

We look at how the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services characterizes these institutions' use of restraint, as well as the training that personnel there receive.

We ask the police how they'd respond if they were called to a scene and witnessed a teen tied up in a chair in a residential setting.

We examine proposed new regulations that if finalized may prohibit the use of mechanical restraint and alter the guidelines for physical restraint and seclusion.

We ask local districts, 'What happens when a hands-off approach doesn't work?'

Next: how is 'restraint' defined?: Kids restrained at Staunton mental health hospital for safety