Parents of children with autism are calling for tougher rules governing the use of calm rooms in special schools in the UK and Ireland after a whistle-blowing teacher reported their abuse.
The calls follow the publication of an article in the latest issue of Autism Eye magazine, in which a teacher claims that children were forced into such a room in his school as a punishment for petty misdemeanours. He said he even saw a teacher forcibly keeping the door shut.
Simon (not his real name for legal reasons) told Autism Eye that he had also witnessed a child with autism being zipped into a tent within the room for making high-pitched noises. One child was said to have put her head through a glass panel in the door of the room after being shut inside.
With the agreement of the whistle-blowing teacher, Autism Eye has made a formal complaint to Ofsted about the offending school.
Gillian Loughran, editor of Autism Eye, said the Department for Education, Ofsted and the Health and Safety Executive are paying too little attention to the use of these rooms.
She is calling for tougher guidelines to be introduced on the use of calm rooms, which are also known as chill-out rooms or safe rooms. If that failed to happen, she said parents would be justified in demanding that the rooms be banned.
In addition to Simon, Autism Eye has been contacted by a number of school staff who were unhappy with the use of the rooms in their schools, but were too afraid to go public.
Loughran said: “Quiet rooms, chill-out rooms, calm rooms, safe rooms, whatever you want to call them, are not being used as intended. Their purpose is to offer an upset child a refuge from the bustle of a busy classroom. Instead, we hear they are being used as a form of punishment and seclusion, where young children are being forced in and are unable to leave.”
The Department for Education guidelines state merely that special schools should have a ‘quiet room’ for students and that this should be a calm, safe place. It is up to the discretion of schools how these rooms are used.
As a parent of a child with autism, Loughran said the abuse of these “isolation chambers” is the “stuff parents’ nightmares are made of”. She said that parents are often not aware if their child has been placed in one of these rooms and warned schools that it is only a matter of time before parents in the UK follow their counterparts in the US and take legal action against schools that are misusing them.
In September, an Arizona couple announced it was suing their son’s former school, where he was allegedly dragged into in a tiny ‘cool-down room’ and confined there for hours. In July, the parents of a 12-year-old boy with autism issued proceedings against their son’s school in Lincoln, Nebraska for causing him post-traumatic stress after confining him to a chill-out room.
Loughran said she believes that many children are being placed in calm rooms because it is convenient for frustrated teaching staff. She added: “There is no evidence that seclusion helps children, but there is plenty saying it harms them.
“We cannot sit back and let each school make its own rules. If a parent was to use a room like that in their home they would be hauled up for abuse, and rightly so. Yet it appears to happen in schools all too often.”
Published: 14 January 2013
