Isolation and seclusion in schools: Whitefield must be a turning point for the Department for Education 

The recently published Waltham safeguarding review, Learning from the Past: The Use of Restrictive Practices, Including Seclusion, has rightly brought renewed scrutiny to the use of seclusion in special schools. The details of the Whitefield School case, including a BBC investigation showing autistic children being locked inside calming rooms and abused are deeply distressing. Additionally, recent research shows 1 in 12 pupils are isolated routinely (at least once/week), losing an average of 8 hrs curriculum time. 

However, Tom Bennett, the Department for Education’s independent behaviour adviser, defends isolation and seclusion rooms arguing that seclusion is “a perfectly normal, useful and compassionate strategy that is common across the school sector.” The Restraint Reduction Network (RRN) agrees that these rooms remain commonplace in too many special schools across the United Kingdom, but we fundamentally disagree that this is compassionate. Seclusion severs children’s neurobiological need for connection, and is harmful, breaching fundamental human rights and is known to be highly traumatic. 

Because restraint, including seclusion, can, and does, cause significant physical and psychological harm, it must only ever be used where it is necessary e.g., where there is an imminent risk of significant harm, and where the risk of not intervening is greater than the risk of doing so. It should then be proportional e.g. the least restriction for the shortest time possible.  

Where restraint is not necessary or proportionate, it should be recognised as the misuse of restraint. In the case of seclusion, this is unlawful detention and should be treated as a safeguarding concern. Seclusion must never be routine, punitive or used as a substitute for skilled support.   

The language used in schools also matters. Seclusion rooms are often given misleading names like “calming rooms”, “time out”, or “sensory rooms”, but if a child is not free to leave, the practice has become seclusion or enforced isolation.  

The DofE’s stance becomes more problematic by the fact that the national policy picture remains uneven. Scotland has placed guidance on restraint and seclusion in schools on a statutory footing through Calum’s Law, while Wales has a framework rooted in reducing restrictive practice through a human rights-based approach. In England, new recording and reporting duties are welcome, but they still do not provide the stronger statutory framework that many families, charities and rights organisations, including Bild and RRN, have called for. 

Families have been raising concerns around seclusion for years. Beth Morrison is a trustee of the RRN, and has supported families whose children have been traumatised by restraint and seclusion. Along with Kate Sanger who is also a parent, she says she has “supported far too many families over more than a decade whose children have been emotionally and physically traumatised by these practices, with long term effects that stay with them into adulthood.” She continues, “I have data spanning years that shows just how many children across the UK have been affected”. 

Alexis Quinn, RRN Manager and ex-teacher with her own lived experience of seclusion and isolation, said: “Children who are distressed need connection, skilled support and adults who understand what their behaviour is communicating. Enforced isolation tells a child they are too much, too difficult or too unsafe to be with others. That is not care, and it is not the culture we should accept in any school.” 

For the children themselves, animal imagery is sometimes used to describe how the practice makes them feel dehumanised. For example, one child in Mallon’s (2025) * study stated, “You feel like an animal in a cage’ while a participant in Condliffe’s (2021)** research described the experience as being ‘treated like a dog’. There are many examples of seclusion resulting in night terrors and school refusal.  

Emma Highfield, Clinical Director for RRN has said: “We are concerned to see the frequent and sustained use of seclusion and segregation of children away from their peers. This has often seemed to be part of a culture of how distress is responded to and reflect the stark reality of the absence of creative and human rights-based approaches to supporting children who become upset and dysregulated. We are ready to work with schools, education authorities and government to share existing models and practices that we can use to work differently.” 

We are particularly concerned about the over-reliance on seclusion in special schools and for children with learning disabilities and autistic people. The RRN therefore, calls for the Department for Education to end the use of seclusion and isolation in special schools, as called for by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Global mandates from the UNCRC and the World Health Organisation have reframed enforced isolation as an indicator of “systemic failure.” 

What are the alternative solutions? 

There are more humane, skilled and effective ways to support children in distress. It is vital that teachers and support staff in special schools receive the training they need to meet the needs of pupils and to minimise distress resulting from unmet needs. It is important teachers have training in human rights, prevention, de-escalation, including learning directly from people with lived experience. Both Scottish schools’ guidance and Mental Health use of force guidance in England ensure this is the case through the training being certified as meeting the RRN training standards. Edition two of the RRN training standards will have a version specifically for schools and will be published in 2026.  

We stand ready to work constructively with the Department for Education and partners across education to strengthen guidance, place restraint and seclusion guidance on a statutory footing as Scotland has done, improve accountability and help schools replace harmful restrictive practices with approaches that keep children with learning disabilities and autism safe, understood and included. We have recently published Information sheets to be used in schools to assist teaching professionals. These info sheets can be downloaded here. 

Given the latest upsetting accounts within the Whitefield story, it is time that ministers treated seclusion and isolation in special schools with the gravitas and urgency it deserves.

_{*Mallon, Rachel (2025) “Young people’s narratives on their experiences of attending a school with an isolation space”, University of Sheffield (School of Education). Available online via the White Rose ETheses Repository [1, 2]} 

_{** Condliffe, E. (2021). “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Young People’s Experience of Isolation Rooms/Booths in UK Mainstream Secondary Schools. Doctorate in Educational Psychology (EdPsyD), University of East Anglia. [ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk], [ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk]}