CITIZENS AGAINST RESTRAINT

TORONTO, ONTARIO----February 2006

Email address: citizensagainstrestraint@sympatico.ca BELIEF STATEMENT AND POSITION PAPER

[Full document available upon request]

SELECTED EXCERPTS: Citizens Against Restraint is a group of citizens, family members and service workers who have come together because of our concern about the use of restraints in human services (health, education, community and social services.)

We are taking individual and communal action based on our concerns. We have developed a position paper about our beliefs, concerns and response to human service restraint use and training.

We want to raise awareness about the true and traumatic impact of restraints on people who are restrained, those who do the restraining, and those who witness the event. We want to stimulate discussion about the moral issues involved, the kind of society we want to live in, and what that society does in our name.

But our goal is clear - to ultimately stop the use of restraints by human services.

We urge individuals in other communities and provinces, who are concerned about this issue to form local groups, inform themselves and take action toward this goal.

We have seen the problems with restraint use and required training emerge in many areas of human service including long term care, mental health, developmental services, the education system, and corrections.

Statement of Belief As concerned citizens, we reject restraint use and restraint training by human services. We want the use of restraint and training in restraint by human services in Ontario to stop. We want government approval and funding of restaint use and restraint training to stop. We want more relevant and effective moral aproaches to serving vulnerable people adopted and supported.

The frequent and long-term use of restraint is physically and emotionally wounding so many people with bodily and intellectual impairments. People of all ages, from children to elders, have even been killed from being restrained by trained human service workers acting within their agency's guidelines. Service workers themselves, and we as a society, lose out when such harmful practices are legitimized and even encouraged. This is a moral issue.

We believe that the use of restraint, and the training of human service workers to use restraint, is a destructive approach to serving socially devalued people of any age Therefore, we call on the citizens and the human service organizations of Ontario, as well as governmental and legislative bodies, to put an end to the use of and training in human service restraint.

Background A pattern of social, political and human service developments has created a dangerous situation in Ontario and elsewhere for people with physical and intellectual impairments who receive services. A growing atmosphere of fear and violence runs through society (ie. i the media, neighbourhoods, schools, cities, political circles, etc), accompanied by an acceptance of the use of control and violence as a response to such fear. Human services in particular increasingly rely on "behavioural" approaches (ig, Intensive Behavioral Intervention, Applied Behavioral Analysis, etc.) which seek to control and manage "behaviours" rather than understand and help peole. We see increasing pressures to exclude people who are stereotypically perceived as menaces or behaviour problems from being eligible to receive services. We have seen a rise in the prevalence of organizations which claim to train human service workers in "violence prevention and management," the "management of assaultive behaviour" or "de-escalation," but that actually are teaching millions of service workers how to use control and violence against very vulnerable children and adults. At the same time, government regulations are requiring more and more human service workers to be trained in restraint techniques.

As concerned citizens, we are alarmed by these developments. We fear the growing acceptance of restraints and restraint training as "needed human service approaches." We are saddened by the frequent and long-term human service use of restraint which has resulted in so many children, adults and elders being harmed in their bodies, minds and spirits. We are afraid of the direction in which these trends are taking our human services, as even more controlling approaches become standard practice.

The human service use of restraint is inevitably surrounded by cover-up, disguise and deception. it is often cloaked in language that hides the negative reality of the harm which it causes. For example a major and false stereotype about restraint is that it is only, or even just predominantly, used in situations of imminent danger. This is not true. Yet many programs, services and systems claim and `act as if it were true. Similarly, motives to maintain power and control over people by the use of restraint are described as necessary "therapeutic" or "emergency" restraint. The deaths of peple who were killed by restraint are often explained with misleading legal language, such as "positonal asphyxia." Those who restrained human service clients until they died rarely are charged with murder or brought to justice for what they did, despite the fact that some coroner's reports have usd the terms "manslaughter" and "homocide" in describing deaths caused by human service restraint.

Restrained people are overwhelmingy and largely falsely held responsible by service workers and the public for their restraint......a mindset of power and control which human service restraint is intimately linked to, makes abuse and violence by human service staff against vulnerable people much more likely to occur It opens a door that should not be opened. Human service restraint use often violates th noble principles of service to those in need. It demeans the dignity of the persons involved--the dignity of the restrainers and the restrained persons.

We firmly believe in respecting the inherent dignity of each person, regardless of age, ability, impairment, history of past acts, and social status. This belief implies, among other things, that we recogize our shared humanity with other people, particularly socially devalued people. The inherent dignity of all people calls us to desire and to work toward the good of others. We realize that our good is wedded to the good of others, and that what hurts others also hurts us.