Should the New Westminster school district ban the practice of putting special needs students in isolation rooms? The answer is yes, according to Faith Bodnar, executive director of Inclusion B.C. Her agency recently launched an online survey on the use of isolation rooms, which the district calls "quiet" rooms, to house disruptive or distressed students with special needs.
"It's based on our concern and awareness that these kinds of methods are being used without any consistent policy, often without adequate training. There's no tracking by the ministry of the use of these types of procedures," Bodnar said about the survey, which closed on Friday, July 19.
The survey is non-scientific and is meant to further Inclusion B.C.'s goal to require schools to document and report the use of restraint, seclusion and other aversive measures to the Ministry of Education, and to create government regulation that prohibits the use of seclusion in all B.C. schools.
"We've been aware for a few years, and very, very concerned about the use of these kind of strategies," she said about the use of the isolation rooms, also known as safe rooms, which are used in many districts throughout the Lower Mainland and beyond.
Often they are used for special needs students who may be disruptive, or, alternatively, they are used for students who may become overstimulated.
But Bondar, whose association advocates for the inclusion of people with disabilities, doesn't see any benefit to isolating special needs students.
"There's no place in our modern, 21st century to be hurting children in this way," she said.
"I've seen pictures of students, and it's shocking and heartbreaking. Physical - physical harm to students being advocate
placed in rooms and locked in those rooms, dragged down hallways and put in those rooms - that's just brutal and barbaric, and there's no place for any student to be treated that way in school."
There needs to be good training, a profound level of training, around behaviour support for children in schools, said Bodnar, a New Westminster resident.
