What's Your State's Policy on Restraint and Seclusion in Schools?

Here in Wisconsin, as soon as the month of September rolls around, we can feel the change of season in the air. On a bike ride with my family over the weekend, I was awed by the contrast between trees that were still lush and green and trees whose leaves are beginning to turn color. Get helpful hints about behavior management.

As I consider seasons and change and the new school year ahead, I think about all the new legislation that's been popping up to make sure that students and staff are safe in our schools. 

Within the last year, a flurry of states have passed legislation to reduce the use of restraint and seclusion. From Kansas to Delaware to Indiana, from Kentucky to Ohio to Maine and Wisconsin, more and more states are stepping up to ensure that educators have the skills to manage disruptive and violent student behavior safely. 

What does this mean for you? If you live in a state whose restraint and seclusion laws require staff training, it means that you can learn:

• De-escalation techniques to help you prevent behaviors from progressing.
• Personal safety techniques to protect yourself from harm.
• Last-resort methods for intervening physically with as little potential for harm to yourself or a student as possible.
• Debriefing and documentation strategies to ensure that everyone involved in a situation can cope and work toward positive change. 

Balancing teaching with behavior management can be tricky to say the least. Educators enter the field with the aim of helping students learn, and are then often confronted with a bevy of behavior issues that make their goal quite a challenge. 

Here at CPI, we give you skills to decrease problem behavior so you can focus on teaching. One of the most common things we hear from the professionals we work with is that they wish they'd had Nonviolent Crisis Intervention^® training before they left university. Our training makes them better prepared to handle behaviors and be more effective in the classroom.

For more about your state's legislative requirements and how we can help, check out our Legislation posts. Another helpful resource is My State's Seclusion and Restraint Laws from the Autism National Committee. 

How does your school handle restraint and seclusion? What types of policies or training have you implemented in order to reduce the number of incidents in your school? Please share in the Comments section below.

Wishing you a safe, healthy, and productive school year!