Minimizing Restraint and Seclusion in Schools: A Response to Beaudoin and Moore.
Replace restraint and seclusion with six clear pillars of proactive behavior support.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Stephens et al. (2018) wrote a narrative reply to two earlier authors. They pulled together policy papers, ethics codes, and school guidelines.
The goal was to show how schools can cut restraint and seclusion to near zero. No new data were collected.
What they found
The paper lists six pillars: strong behavior plans, staff training, family teaming, data reviews, leadership buy-in, and state policy.
When all six are in place, schools rarely need to hold kids down or lock them alone.
How this fits with other research
Tassé et al. (2013) backs this up with numbers. Across 14 studies, restraint dropped 79% when schools used the same kind of positive plans.
Gerhardt et al. (1991) seems to disagree, saying restraint can stay if safeguards exist. The difference is era: 1991 focused on legal cover; 2018 focuses on prevention.
Henry et al. (2022) extends the idea to race. Staff already know ABA tools, but they still suspend Black students more. The fix is the same: use proactive plans before trouble starts.
Why it matters
You can audit your school today. Check if every student with problem behavior has an up-to-date plan, if teachers get weekly coaching, and if parents meet monthly. If any pillar is missing, start there. The evidence shows these steps cut restraint without new funding.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Pick one student still restrained and write a one-page behavior plan with prevention, teaching, and reward steps.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Increasing efforts have been made in the field of special education to identify positive, evidence-based practices (EBPs) to meet the needs of students who engage in problem behavior, with a major goal being to eliminate or limit the use of reactive measures such as restraint and seclusion ( Snell & Walker, 2014 ). Various stakeholders, including families and self-advocates, have voiced concerns about the dangers of restraint and seclusion and the lack of protection afforded to students who engage in severe problem behavior. In the previous article in this issue of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Beaudoin and Moore (2018) echo these concerns in their account of a family's experience with restraint as told from the perspective of a father whose son was subjected to restraint, resulting in a number of adverse short- and long-term consequences that affected the entire family. In response to Beaudoin and Moore, we provide readers with a brief review of the current status of restraint and seclusion in school settings and evidence-based strategies that can be used to address severe problem behavior and reduce the need for restraint and seclusion. For readers interested in exploring restraint and seclusion in greater depth, we suggest recent work by Trader and colleagues (2017) . We also have outlined guidelines for behavior support planning that should be considered by various stakeholders as educators work toward establishing safe and supportive school environments that address a wide range of student behavioral needs.
Intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2018 · doi:10.1352/1934-9556-56.3.165