On restraint and dignity

At the risk of annoying some people, I have to say that I am disturbed by the increasing calls I hear these days for “more advanced” physical restraint techniques for use with troubled children and youth. I realize restraint training reflects a reality in the world of Child and Youth Care practice: the reality that there is, at times, a physical risk to staff and other youth. And I recognize that people who work with others want, and need, to feel safe in doing so. But I wonder about a few things.

I wonder if the training which people are currently receiving, regardless of the particular “school” of training, places enough emphasis on the interventions one can use before restraint becomes necessary. I have taken the training from a few different schools, and know that when the training was done by a well trained professional, there was considerable emphasis placed on these advance interventions. But when I have seen the training done by “local trainers”, who had only been trained to be local trainers, there always seemed to be more emphasis on the physical interventions than on the pre-restraint interventions. So, it leaves me to wonder if the training the average worker is receiving is what it should be.

I wonder about this because when I listen to Child and Youth Care workers discuss the need for “more advanced” training, they always seem to be discussions about the physical training, as opposed to more advanced verbal intervention techniques, for example. Why not more advanced pre-restraint training? Because it seems to me that the more effective staff can become with these pre-restraint techniques, the less necessary the others will become.

But I also have another concern and that has to do with the types of physical techniques which are taught. I was in a program the other day and in it was a young man who had a habit of physically assaulting others. The staff restrained him a lot, and I wondered if he wasn’t just learning that physical strength is the answer to things like threat to self. And in another program I met a young man who had been physically assaulted by his father. And the staff in this program restrained him a lot too. And I wondered what he was learning – maybe that his father was right?

The other evening I watched a Tai Chi master demonstrate a response to physical threat. A large man attacked him and as he tried to do so the master, using the assailant’s movements, caused the assailant to fly past him without touching the master. And then rather than just letting the assailant fly by and fall down, the Tai Chi master caught the assailant so that he remained standing, having been ineffective in his assault. And I thought about how much more dignity there was in this than in restraining the assailant. Sure, the assailant was frustrated, but he was left, I thought, with more dignity than if he had been restrained. The message was still the same “I won’t let you hurt”.

Anyway, I guess I could rant on, but my point is made. I wonder if we are placing too much emphasis on the physical, and in the physical, I wonder if there are not better techniques than those which just involve exercising power and control over other? Or, maybe I am just reacting to inadequate local trainings because I do know that in the training I have experienced from professional trainers, the emphasis has been the pre-restraint techniques and the avoidance of physical intervention.

Thom