Edmonton Public Schools cuts number of seclusion rooms, but confinement continues

Advocates demanding an end to the use of seclusion rooms say they're pleased the Edmonton public school division has decommissioned more than 60 of them in the last year.

A new report to the school board last week shows the number of seclusion rooms has dropped by about 37 per cent during the last year, leaving 105 rooms operational in 56 public schools.

"We're extremely pleased to see a reduction in the number of seclusion rooms and in the use of those rooms, because quite frankly, the trend over the last few years has been in the other direction," said Trish Bowman, the CEO of Inclusion Alberta.

A seclusion room is an empty chamber that can be locked from the outside. Provincial standards dictate that school staff are only to use the rooms in an emergency, when a student presents a danger of harm to themselves or others.

Staff are only supposed to put students in the rooms with parents' permission. Division employees have acknowledged that in a crisis, it does sometimes happen without parental consent.

For years, Inclusion Alberta and some parents are among advocates for students with disabilities who say the rooms should be eliminated.

Parent Rosemarie Jordan says she found out years after the fact that her son, who has multiple disabilities, was put into seclusion rooms, and school staff never informed her.

The experience caused him trauma, distress, and affected his willingness to attend school, she said.

"He just understood that this is something that adults shouldn't be doing to me," she said in an interview last week.

She said her son, who is now in Grade 10, consistently asks to speak school division managers because he wants to tell them to stop the practice.

Research suggests that when a school employee feels it necessary to put a student inside one of the rooms, the experience can also distress staff members and other students who witness the event, Bowman said.

Use of the rooms became the focus of attention in 2018, when a Strathcona County family launched a lawsuit in response to their autistic child's troubling experience in a seclusion room.

The then-NDP government promised to ban school seclusion rooms. After the United Conservative Party won the 2019 election, the government reversed that decision and instead introduced standards for the use of seclusion and restraint.

Since then, Edmonton Public Schools has had a stated goal of phasing out the rooms.