VIRGINIA MINISTER SHEDS LIGHT ON FAULTY SYSTEM

VA MINISTER HAD COURAGE TO STAND FOR THE DISABLED (Received October,2002 --Sorry everyone it took me so long to get this posted) REPORT TO THE VIRGINIA SEAC: "I want to thank [ ] for inviting me to this meeting. My wife and I have participated in Special Education Advisory Committees in Virginia's Public Schools for about 12 years. We believe in the process of dialogue and active involvement in the education of our children.

In the past 22 years, I have been active in an organization known as Volunteer Emergency Families for Children. As a paster of churches in [ ] I have been involved in the starting up o two PLUS programs, which means Partners in Learning and Understanding Students. This is a tutor/mentor program that matches volunteers with at-risk children in the public school for one hour per week with one child.

My coming here today evolves out of my experience with children in the public schools. My concern was raised to a high level of focus when I saw and heard a child in full body restraint on a floor in a teacher's lounge. When this happened I was tutoring a child in a music room, which was two rooms distant from the incident.

This incident caused me to wonder about the impact on other children as well as to the other children who were subject to physical restraint in a seclusion room.

In coming to you today, I ask these questions of you: 1) Do you realize that in the public school system there is no policy governing the use of physical restraint or seclusion? 2) Do you realize that there is no working common definition of a seclusion room? 3) Do you realize that there is no model for a safely constructed and maintained seclusion room? 4) Do you know that there may be no authorization for seclusion rooms, except a verbal approval? 5) Do you realize that there are many types of seclusion and physical restraint being employed under different criteria throughout the entire public school system of the Commmonwealth? 6) Do you realize that the Superintendent of Public Instruction does not know and cannot know at this time how much seclusion is in existence or how frequently seclusion is being used or if there have been any serious breaches of civil rights in the use of these instruments?

I have spent over a year and a half researching only a sampling of the school systems to determine the existing policy in these areas.

This is what I have found. There is NO policy from the state DOE on seclusion or physical restraint. There is NO clear understanding of a definition of seclusion room among the school systems that I surveyed under Virginia FOIA. They are called by many names and are not governed by any common criteria.

There have been deaths in two states in the past year in Prince Georges County, MD and in Texas from the use of physical restraint.

There is a range of philosophy on the use of seclusion and physical restraint in the school systems ranging from a complete disapproval of their use to a very liberal use of the full spectrum of options.

The oversight is left to a process involving the IEP. It becomes a shield for knowing what is happening across the board because of privacy issues. Given the children who are subject to this type of management, the families are likely to be having many difficulties at home and can easily be powerless to the authority of the IEP school personnel. Having been in IEP sessions for most of 34 years, I know that the process can be intimidating to the most confident of persons.

There is not an effective civil rights oversight for the use of seclusion, as there is required in faciliites that are outside the public school domain. Yet children are placed in such rooms without medical oversight or guidelines as to the conditions of use and reporting or evaluation of its effectiveness to a positive behavioral support plan.

There is little mention in responses to my questions of school systems of the use of positive behavioral support plans or behavior assessment. I even sense that there is a fuzzy line between use of seclusion for punitive measures and frustration as opposed to a functional part of a positive support plan subject to evaluation of effectiveness to alter the behavior that leads to these incidents.

There is a large concern on my part that children who are viewing teacher, counselors, administrators and other authority figures all up and down the line in the local school are creating an erroneous model for the use of this concept in a later time in their life. Could a child, vulnerable because of a genetic difficult temperament be subject to being put in a box or a close and locked, because that was the model understood by the parent or child care person, though distorted, shown to them at an impressionable age? If this might be so, then there is a Pandora's box of demons on the loose right now.

There is no indication that anyone is devising a policy or a plan to help the children understand the nature of disability that is causing these situations. Certainly it is difficult enough for the child with the disability to understand his or her own emotions, behavior and negative self-image. There is every reason to believe that a negative perception is being shaped of children as "bad" because of behavior and thus projected to the child and to the disability.

I believe that administrators are left on their own to make up their own policy in this area. As an example, ------county has NO policy on seclusion and physical restraint from the top down. It is left to the judgement of the local school administration team according to a letter from --------Superintendent.

I believe that there could be, if there hasn't already been a serious injury and/or death of a student from physical restraint. There are no records kept to correlate injuries to students, teachers, administrators to the use of these methods of behavior control and management.

Therefore, as a private citizen, a pastor of a United Methodist church that is in partnershp for mentoring/tutoring students, as a parent of five children, two of whom have disabilities, as a person who believes that all God's children deserve the right to be a full human being with dignity, I recommend:

1) That there should be an effort to establish and to ensure a just and safe policy for the use of physical restraint and seclusion for every school system in Virginia, if it is indeed needed at all. The positive behavior support plan is created as a proactive tool to prevent such reactive use of seclusion; so it is questionable that seclusion would be a part of any positive behavior plan.

2) That there should be a clear definition of the terms for physical restraint and seclusion with appropriate authorization and guidelines for use in connection with federally mandated behavior assessment and positive behavior support plans.

3) That there should be a database created within the school system to track the use of seclusion and physical restraints as a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of the system for the interventions of changing behavior of the children involved.

4) That a means be provided to guard the privacy of children under an IEP while giving civil rights oversight and monitoring of the use of seclusioon and physical restraint as is accomplished in non-public school settings.

5) That there be established a policy of providing positive counseling to children who are interacting with children being placed in restraint or seclusion.

If due consideration is given to creating guidelines for the local school boards to create plans, it will set a tone for the safety of the children with disabilities of emotions and for better modeling to students about the use of such methods.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to convey my concerns and for offering these recommendations.

Excerpt from Minister's letter to CIBRA: I presented comments this morning in Richmond at the State Special Education Advisory Committee. I am attaching my comments for your information. The SEAC established an Ad Hoc committee to write recommendations for policy and regulations to bring about changes along the lines of my recommendations. The unanimity of the SEAC in this process surprise and pleased me after having run into so many road blocks.

CIBRA THANKS VA MINISTER WHO CARRIES CHRISTMAS IN HIS HEART ALL YEAR ROUND!

	Powered by MSN TV