Norma

‘If you’re working with a child who has trust issues and when they get upset, you lock them in a room, on no planet would that be a good practice.’

Norma taught children with disability for more than 20 years.

‘I’ve taught in high school, special schools, high school support units, special skills, and primary school support units,’ she said.

A decade ago, Norma taught at a regional special school that was being renovated. The renovation included breakout rooms, ‘purpose-built for kids to be sent with a door closed’ to control behaviour.

‘These sides [of the breakout room] consisted of metal panels that weren’t sealed at the top or the bottom … which means, of course, they were open to the elements; the heat, the cold, and anything that would crawl in, could crawl in.’

Norma told the Royal Commission that the school placed highly anxious children alone in the breakout rooms.

‘I’ve seen kids rip their clothes, urinate all over the walls as a way of protesting about how awful [the rooms] were. I’ve been in a situation where there was a young boy that was hitting his head on the door and breaking the Perspex. It didn’t shatter it, but it sort of started to break up.’

Norma told the school’s principal to let the boy out.

‘She virtually said, “Well, you’re on your own there …” and I said, “Well, okay then, you leave.”’

Norma put toys on the floor, and opened the door. The boy went to them and calmed down.

‘[Breakout rooms are] ineffectual because you were never allowed anything in there with them. So, there was no hope that they would be distracted. There was no calming. There was no sensory items. There was nothing except a metal box.’

Norma said teachers were required to record each incident, but it appeared nobody used the records to assess whether the breakout room ‘was useful or not’.

She said although some students did need to be physically restrained occasionally, the school taught the staff inappropriate methods. Norma said the school trained her using a program designed to restrain male American prisoners.

‘Which is not the demographic we use it for. We’re using it for very small people … I’ve seen kids being restrained with two people either side for maybe 50 minutes. That is way, way too long.’

The school asked parents enrolling their children to consent to having them restrained, but Norma said many parents didn’t understand what that involved, or felt they couldn’t refuse.

‘A lot of these parents are desperate. They’re scared that their child is going to be expelled or removed from the school … They’re vulnerable themselves and that’s becoming more and more evident as the face of disability is changing, we’re getting more parents unwell and have their own issues. They’re not in a position to take on the school.’

Norma said children enrolled in special schools increasingly showed signs of trauma.

‘These students are coming from a place of mistrust. They don’t trust adults because, to be quite honest and this is really blunt, most of the adults in their life have just fucked them over, really.’

Special education teachers need trauma-informed training, Norma says, not breakout rooms.