N.B. advocate says seclusion room changes needed [Video]

FREDERICTON –

The practice of teachers putting misbehaving children in small, windowless “seclusion rooms” should be used only as a last resort to ensure safety, New Brunswick’s child and youth advocate says in a report tabled Monday.

The report from Kelly Lamrock raises concerns the seclusion rooms have become an accepted practice — beginning in kindergarten — but there is little data on how frequently they are used and in which schools.

He stopped short of calling for a ban on the practice but called on the legislature to act immediately to legislate better controls.

“Seclusion rooms are used at a moment when most other choices appear to have disappeared and the child, for their own safety, or those around them, needs to be restrained from going around the rest of the school,” Lamrock told reporters. But while the Education Department has guidelines, he said there is nothing currently in the law …