What's happening in our schools? They are harming instead of protecting and teaching disability children due to lack of training and lack of knowledge or compassion for the special needs children it needs to change and schools must be held accountable!What's happening in our schools? They are harming instead of protecting and teaching disability children due to lack of training and lack of knowledge or compassion for the special needs children it needs to change and schools must be held accountable!
After her son,was assaulted at school by a teacher Holly could not get any accountability by the authorities or help by police. There is a push for disabilities children to go into mainstream schools yet they are not being looked after in special needs or public schools.
SBS News noted
'A miracle that a child hasn't died': Are Australian schools failing children with disability?
In Australian schools, teachers are permitted to physically restrain and seclude students under exceptional circumstances. But parents and experts say the misuse of these practices is commonplace and that children with disability are given 'no credence' when it comes to reporting.
By Zacharias Szumer
(SBS News / Jono Delbridge)
Holly is the parent of a first-year student, Ben, whose name we've changed for privacy.
"Ben loves Lego, he loves playing with anything army and trucks and toys, [and is] generally a happy boy," she says.
However, Ben's behaviour started to change after he told Holly about an incident with a staff member at Lang Lang Primary School in country Victoria earlier this year.
"[The staff member] grabbed him by the arm and threw him at a chair, which caused the chair to tip back and [Ben to] hit his head on a table," Holly explains.
The staff member reportedly then said "Stop crying, idiot" to Ben, who has level 2 autism and ADHD and requires a lot of assistance from disability support staff.
At that time, Ben also told Holly that the staffer regularly grabbed his arm or shoulder in ways that hurt him.
Such physical restraints are a type of ‘restrictive practice' — permitted under certain conditions in school settings to prevent imminent harm but which, according to SBS News' findings, are often overused and underreported.
Holly is one of many parents of children with disability subjected to restrictive practices in Australian schools who have been left frustrated and distraught by a lack of transparency and assistance from both schools and state education departments.
SBS News has spoken to dozens of parents who have shared similar testimonies, some of which cannot be reported on due to ongoing court proceedings.
Disability advocates disappointed by response to Royal Commission Report
Veteran disability advocate Julie Phillips says she's aware of more than 40 schools in Victoria alone where children with disability have been violently restrained or secluded.
She tells SBS News that one of the barriers faced by parents in reporting the misuse of restrictive practices is that the testimony provided by their children is difficult to substantiate.
"[State education departments do] not allow independent investigations. Terms of reference are often hidden … [and] any lawyers the department brings in allow it to claim that their work is privileged and therefore efforts to see any investigation documents are thwarted," she says.
But most importantly, in breach of the Child Safety Standards, child victims are not given any credence.
"If a child reports abuse, and the staff member denies the abuse, that's good enough for the department. The priority for the department is to protect its staff and its schools."
The schools need to protect the disability children who are the most vulnerable of children and nothing teachers should be working with these children without proper training or education in,disabilities they seem to be as bad as untrained disability workers at present who have no understanding and take their tempers out onpoor vulnerable children with,no punishment for the teachers. Our children must be protected better than this.
All the best
Anndrea x
Sign my petition to protect disability children and persons in care from harm by workers and to give them a voice.
change.org/disabilitycameras