School District No. 46 (SD46) has a new administrative regulation about physical restraint and seclusion of students circulating for comment until Dec. 2.
The regulation No. 6700 was updated by SD46 after the Ministry of Education asked the school district to do so, to ensure the regulation was reflecting best practices.
“They were rewritten to include definitions around what restraint and what seclusion mean,” said Vanessa White, director of instruction, student support services, at the Oct. 12 school board meeting.
“We’ve updated it to include more restorative practices, rather than punitive, and we’ve updated it to reflect the fact that our district believes strongly in CPI techniques and we train our staff, quite an extensive number of our staff, about CPI and how to do restraint safely.”
CPI is a model for training staff in “safe, respective, non-invasive methods for managing disruptive and assaultive behaviour” that includes de-escalation techniques.
The new regulation states that in “exceptional circumstances it may be necessary to apply physical restraint or seclusion when a student presents imminent danger of serious physical harm to self, others and/or property.”
It says physical restraint can be used to “secure and maintain the safety of the person or the safety of others,” and that seclusion is the “involuntary confinement of a person, alone in a room, enclosure or space, which the person is physically prevented from leaving.”
Under the regulation, “time outs” are not considered seclusion, and restraint and seclusion “are not meant to be used as a disciplinary measure or to force compliance in an educational setting.”
It states that physical restraint should only be used after a verbal warning to the student and that it should be done “with the least amount of force to protect the student and restrainer.”
See a full copy of administrative regulation No. 6700 at www.sd46.bc.ca/index.php/regulation where a response form is also available.
Response forms should be completed and returned to the school district office either by email to: [email protected], by fax to: 604-886-4652, or by mail to: School District No. 46, PO Box 220, Gibsons, BC V0N 1V0.
