School Restraint and Seclusion in Yukon: Your Child's Rights

Yukon parents have already seen what happens when a school system uses restraint and seclusion without oversight. The Jack Hulland Elementary School scandal — in which students with complex needs were physically restrained, dragged through hallways, and placed in isolation rooms — forced a government apology, class-action settlements, and a territory-wide reckoning with how these practices are used in classrooms. If you're concerned this might be happening to your child, what follows is what you need to know.

What Happened at Jack Hulland

The Yukon Child and Youth Advocate Office (YCAO) conducted a systemic review of behaviour management practices at Jack Hulland Elementary School in Whitehorse. The review, titled "I Am Not Okay, It's Not Okay," documented a pattern of deeply troubling practices: students with behavioural exceptionalities being physically held, restrained, and removed to locked isolation spaces informally known as "The Nest."

Parents of non-verbal students described being particularly marginalized during the investigation because their children could not provide verbal accounts of what had happened. Some families only learned what their children had experienced through disclosure by other students or by reviewing incident reports obtained through formal access to information requests.

The Yukon government issued a formal public apology acknowledging the harm caused at Jack Hulland. Class-action settlements followed. The YCAO's findings led directly to new government directives restricting the use of exclusionary discipline and restrictive interventions across Yukon schools.

This was not an isolated incident at one school with a rogue administrator. It was the result of systemic failures: inadequate training for Educational Assistants, no formal policy framework governing when and how physical intervention could be used, and an absence of parental notification requirements after incidents.

What Restrictive Practices Are and When They're Permissible

"Restrictive practices" is the umbrella term for interventions that limit a student's freedom of movement or remove them from the learning environment. In Yukon schools, this includes:

• Physical restraint: Any physical hold or maneuver used to control a student's body or movement
• Seclusion: Placing a student in a room alone, particularly in a space they cannot freely leave
• Informal exclusion: Sending a student home or keeping them from the classroom due to behaviour, without a formal suspension process

Yukon does not have a standalone statute specifically governing the use of restraint and seclusion in schools the way some larger jurisdictions do. However, the Yukon Human Rights Act prohibits disability discrimination in the provision of public services, and using punitive physical interventions on students whose behaviour stems from a diagnosed disability — FASD, autism, ADHD, trauma — can constitute a failure of the duty to accommodate.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Section 7 right to security of the person also applies. Students have a constitutional right not to be subjected to physical harm by government actors, including school staff.

Following the Jack Hulland fallout, Yukon Education has issued directives restricting the use of physical restraint to emergency situations where there is an immediate risk of harm to the student or others — not as a routine behavioural intervention, and not as punishment.

Signs That Your Child May Have Been Restrained or Secluded

Children with communication differences or disabilities may not tell you directly. Watch for:

• Unexplained bruising or marks after school
• Sudden refusal to attend school or to go to a specific classroom
• Regression in behaviour or emotional regulation that doesn't have an obvious cause
• Reports from other students or parents about what happens in a particular classroom or space
• Vague explanations from school staff about an "incident" without written follow-up

If your child is non-verbal, the absence of disclosure does not mean nothing happened. You have the right to request all incident reports and behavioural logs related to your child through a formal ATIPP request under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. This is often the only way to reconstruct what happened, and families in the Jack Hulland situation used exactly this tool to build their case.

What to Do If You Suspect Restrictive Practices

Step 1: Request incident reports immediately. Contact the principal in writing and ask for all incident reports or behavioural documentation related to your child for the current school year. Schools are required to document physical interventions. If they claim no documentation exists, that is itself a serious procedural failure.

Step 2: File a formal ATIPP request. For a more complete picture — including internal staff emails and behavioural tracking logs — submit a formal ATIPP request to the Yukon ATIPP Office: Box 2703, Whitehorse, Yukon Y1A 2C6, or [email protected]. Specify your child's name, the date range, and the types of records you want (incident reports, behaviour logs, correspondence referencing your child). The government cannot legally withhold your child's core records under internal policy.

Step 3: Contact the Yukon Child and Youth Advocate Office. The YCAO is an independent office of the Legislative Assembly with a specific mandate to uphold children's rights. They are free to contact and can conduct individual advocacy on your behalf. Their involvement has forced departmental action in previous cases where school-level complaints went nowhere.

Step 4: File a complaint with the Yukon Human Rights Commission. If your child was restrained or secluded as a response to disability-related behaviour — rather than a genuine emergency — this may constitute disability discrimination under the Yukon Human Rights Act. Complaints must be filed within 18 months of the incident. The Board of Adjudication can order systemic remedies and financial damages.

Step 5: Contact the RCMP if there was physical injury. Physical restraint that causes injury to a child may constitute assault. If your child was hurt, document the injuries with photographs and consider contacting RCMP alongside your educational complaint.

Demanding a Behaviour Support Plan Instead of Restrictive Interventions

For students who have repeated behavioural crises at school, the appropriate response is a structured, proactive Behaviour Support Plan — not physical intervention. A BSP identifies the functions of a student's behaviour, the environmental triggers, and specific de-escalation and prevention strategies. It is developed collaboratively with parents, the school team, and, where available, a behaviour specialist.

A BSP is a forward-looking document that gives all staff a consistent protocol for responding to a student's needs before a crisis occurs. If your child's school is managing behavioural crises reactively — or worse, using restraint as a first response — you can formally request that the School-Based Team develop a BSP. This request should go in writing, with your child's specific behavioural triggers and needs described clearly.

For students with FASD, autism, or sensory processing disorders, punitive discipline for neurologically based behaviour is ineffective and legally challengeable as a failure to accommodate. The appropriate school response is environmental modification, sensory breaks, visual schedules, and explicit de-escalation protocols built into the support plan.

The Yukon Special Ed Advocacy Playbook includes templates for formally requesting incident records, drafting ATIPP requests for school documentation, and escalating complaints about restrictive practices to the YCAO and the Yukon Human Rights Commission.

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