Statement from the OCO on the new guidelines for schools dealing with behaviours of concern

The Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) welcomes the publication of these long-awaited guidelines, which we hope will provide much needed advice to schools, parents and children on how best to manage behaviours that may place children or others at risk. Importantly, we welcome the guidelines acknowledge that the wellbeing and rights of the children involved are impacted by the use of restraint. This issue is something we have been engaging with the Department of Education on for some time.

Every year we deal with complaints from parents who are deeply unhappy with the use of restrictive practices with their child and we also hear from schools who are at a loss on how best to keep everyone safe. Therefore, we welcome the focus on prevention and de-escalation to prevent the need to restrain a child and the explicit ban on the use of seclusion on children in any circumstances.

However, the OCO believes there are a number of areas where the guidelines should be strengthened.

 Comprehensive monitoring of the use of restraint and seclusion in schools

The current oversight of these interventions are wholly inadequate and schools should not be asked to self-police this most serious intervention.

The use of restraint with children in other settings in Ireland is subject to significant independent oversight and regulation due to the risk of harm.

We would urge the Department take immediate steps to allow the Education Inspectorate to inspect its use in schools in the same way as HIQA on the use of restraint of children in health and social care settings.

Strengthening children’s protection from harm

We believe that the guidelines are completely insufficient from a child protection lens. We have called on the Department to engage with Tusla on their role when there are concerns that a restrictive practice may have been used in an abusive manner with a child and that Tusla’s  role must be clearly reflected in these guidelines.

We also believe that the guidelines should contain a requirement for schools to inform parents every time that restraint has been used regardless of whether harm was caused.

Complaint procedures and independent appeals mechanism

The OCO believes that the complaints process outlined in the guidelines is not sufficiently robust to adequately deal with a matter as serious as the use of restraint against a child in a crisis situation.

We believe that more detailed information about how schools should approach the investigation of complaints about incidents of restraint should have been included in the guidelines. As it stands, the guidelines signpost parents who are unhappy with how a school dealt with an incident of restraint to the schools complaints process.

We are seeking an update from the Department on the long promised revised complaints procedure which should include an independent appeals mechanism, so that everyone can have confidence that matters will be dealt with in a fair, timely and transparent manner.

Review of the guidelines

We welcome that the Department has committed to working with all stakeholders to ensure that these guidelines are reviewed and refined regularly, and that updates will be made as needed.

We hope that these commitments will allow work to start now to address the lack of oversight of these guidelines that can impact such a vulnerable cohort of children.

• 16 December 2024
• Type: Statement