School Putting Autistic Children in Fenced Enclosure

In an attempt to deal with autistic children who "have no sense of boundaries and do not respond to staff asking them to stop," a Sydney primary school has created pens which hold the disabled children during play time. As you might expect, parents have expressed outrage that their kids are forced to stand inside a fenced enclosure that has one tree, a bench and a dirt floor. The Department of Education said in a statement: "The school is located on a busy road. Without this area, the students may leave the school grounds and could potentially be injured. Some of these children have no sense of boundaries and do not respond to staff asking them to stop. Once the school is satisfied a student will listen to directions from staff members and is also aware of playground boundaries, the child can use the playground."

Comments

Re:Coloured writing

[pvera]

Yup.

I am the father of an 11-year old autistic boy with an escape artist complex. He has already tried to run away from his teachers many times, and in one occasion he actually made it out of the school grounds. My only relief at the time is that when he took off running almost everyone was outside, so everyone, even the principal, took off after him.

It still took a good 15 minutes to catch him, and they had already called the police.

A fence is not going to stop this from happening, but it provides a decent speed bump for wandering children that don't understand the concept of danger.