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Seclusion and Physical Restraint Legal in most US Public Schools

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by Heather Vogell, ProPublica, June 19, 2014, 5 a.m.

Carson Luke, who is autistic, was 10 years old when public school staff members crushed his hand in a door while trying to close him in a seclusion room at the Southeastern Cooperative Education Program’s Deep Creek facility in Chesapeake, Va., three years ago. (Photos courtesy of the Luke Family)

Sometimes, Carson later told his mother, workers would run the fan to make him stop yelling. A thick metal door with lockswhich they threw, clank-clank-clank separated the autistic boy from the rest of the decrepit building in Chesapeake, Virginia, just south of Norfolk.

But such limits don’t apply to public schools.

 Definitions and Terms

  • Restraints are any holds in which a student’s ability to move their head, torso, arms or legs are limited.
  • “Mechanical” restraints use something like straps, handcuffs or bungee cords to do the restraining.
  • “Seclusion” refers to situations in which a student is confined against their will in a room they are prevented from leaving — often with a locked door. This is different from a “time out” in which a student is separated from others to allow him or her a chance to calm down. Link

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