Autism Eye’s long-standing campaign against the widespread abuse of chill-out rooms in schools has gained momentum following a landmark case to protect the ‘physical liberty’ of disabled people.
Disabled people have the same human right to physical liberty as the rest of the human race, according to the UK’s most senior judge, a decision that is being hailed as a victory for vulnerable people.
“A gilded cage is still a cage”: Lady Hale
Lady Hale, deputy president of the Supreme Court, the highest court in the UK, ruled that three disabled people who live in care facilities have been ‘deprived of their liberty’ under the terms of mental health legislation.
The case involved a man who lived in staffed accommodation where intervention was sometimes used when he exhibited ‘challenging behaviour’. It also involved two sisters, one of whom is in a residential home and required physical restraint, while the other resided in a foster home and would have been restrained from leaving.
The three cases had already been heard by judges at the High Court, the Court of Protection and then the Court of Appeal. In all three cases appeal judges came to the conclusion that their living arrangements did not amount to deprivation of liberty. But the Supreme Court disagreed and said all three disabled people had been deprived of their liberty.
Lady Hale said disability did not entitle the state to take away the human rights of disabled people. It made no difference even if care and living facilities were comfortable, she said, before declaring: “A gilded cage is still a cage.”
She said: “Far from disability entitling the state to deny such people human rights: rather it places upon the state (and upon others) the duty to make reasonable accommodation to cater for the special needs of those with disabilities.
“Those rights include the right to physical liberty. This is not a right to do, or to go, where one pleases. It is a more focused right, not to be deprived of that physical liberty.”
Gillian Loughran, editor of Autism Eye, said the Supreme Court ruling had thrown the spotlight on the abuse of chill-out rooms in schools. “Our long-running campaign has produced evidence of vulnerable children being placed in rooms from which they cannot escape and which have been used for seclusion and punishment.
She continued: “Their physical liberty and human rights are being denied the minute they are placed in these rooms, which often can’t be opened from the inside.” Loughran called on the government to issue clear guidelines to schools as a matter of urgency following the Supreme Court judgment.
Image courtesy of UK Supreme Court
Published: 21 March 2014
