Restrictive Practices and Seclusion in WA Schools: A Parent's Guide

A parent in Perth found out their child had been placed in a separate room alone for extended periods every time they became dysregulated. The school called it a "calm down space." The child called it being locked away. The difference matters — legally and practically.

Restrictive practices and seclusion in WA schools occupy contested legal territory. The Disability Royal Commission shone a harsh light on how these practices are used against students with disability, and WA is now in the process of legislating clearer rules. But right now, in 2026, there is still a significant gap between what schools do and what parents know they can challenge.

What Are Restrictive Practices?

Restrictive practices are interventions that restrict a person's freedom of movement or access to the environment. In a school context, they typically include:

• Physical restraint — holding a student to prevent movement, including "therapeutic holds" or "safe holding" techniques
• Mechanical restraint — using equipment or clothing to restrict movement
• Chemical restraint — using medication to control behaviour (rare in schools, but documented in some care settings)
• Environmental restraint — restricting access to parts of the school environment
• Seclusion — placing a student alone in a room or space they cannot or do not feel free to leave

These practices are used in Australian schools more than most parents realise. The Disability Royal Commission documented widespread use across the country, with students with autism, intellectual disability, and complex behavioural presentations most commonly affected.

The Current Legal Position in WA

This is where it gets complicated. Western Australia does not currently have a standalone statute that comprehensively regulates the use of restrictive practices in mainstream schools. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission regulates restrictive practices for NDIS-funded supports, but that framework applies to disability service providers, not schools directly.

In the school context, the relevant framework comes from:

The Disability Standards for Education 2005 (DSE): Schools must provide a safe, supportive environment and support students to participate without harassment or victimisation. A student placed in seclusion, or physically restrained in a way that causes distress or harm, may have grounds for a DSE complaint.

The WA School Education Act 1999: Existing policies require behaviour management to follow a graduated, positive approach. Extreme responses to behaviour that are not documented in a student's behaviour plan are harder for schools to justify.

Departmental policy: The WA Department of Education has policies on behaviour management and student wellbeing that restrict the use of physical force to situations of immediate safety risk to the student or others. Restrictive practices used as a routine behavioural management tool — rather than a genuine last-resort safety response — are likely to breach departmental policy even where specific legislation is absent.

Incoming reforms: The 2025 Review of the School Education Act 1999 included recommendations specifically to regulate restrictive practices and seclusion through legislation, directly responding to Disability Royal Commission findings. The WA Government supported these recommendations in principle. This means the legal framework is tightening — but parents advocating right now need to work with what currently exists.

The "Calm Down Room" Question

Schools often frame seclusion spaces in therapeutic language: calm-down rooms, sensory break spaces, regulation corners. Some of these are genuinely supportive — a quiet, low-stimulation space a student can voluntarily access when overwhelmed.

The line is crossed when:

• The student cannot leave when they want to
• Staff are preventing or discouraging exit
• The space is used punitively, not therapeutically
• The placement is not documented in the student's Behaviour Plan
• The student is distressed by the placement but it continues regardless

If your child is being placed in a space regularly, ask to see the behaviour plan. It should describe the purpose of the space, the conditions under which it is used, and the procedure for returning to class. If none of that exists in writing, the use of the space is ad hoc and undocumented — which is itself a problem.

School Refusal Connected to Restrictive Practices

School refusal in autistic children and children with ADHD is often treated as a behavioural or attendance problem. It frequently is not. Research consistently shows that school refusal among neurodivergent students is often a protective response to a school environment that feels unsafe, unpredictable, or punitive.

If your child is developing school refusal and has been subject to restrictive practices or seclusion at school, the connection is worth investigating. Questions to ask:

• Does your child describe feeling trapped, punished, or scared at school?
• Did school refusal begin or intensify after a specific incident?
• Does your child's distress centre on particular spaces or staff?

This matters for advocacy because it repositions the school refusal from a parenting or attendance problem to an institutional safety problem. A child who refuses school because they fear being restrained or isolated is exercising a self-protective response to an environment that has not met its DSE obligations.

What Parents Can Do

Request documentation. Ask the school for a copy of every incident report involving your child and any restraint or seclusion. Schools are required to keep records of these incidents. If records do not exist for incidents you know occurred, raise this in writing.

Review the Behaviour Plan. If your child has an Individual Behaviour Plan (IBP), check whether it explicitly addresses the school's response to dysregulation. It should describe positive, proactive strategies, not just reactive containment. If the IBP is vague or absent, request a Student Support Group meeting to revise it.

Request that the school describe the protocol in writing. If a particular space or intervention is being used with your child, ask the principal to send you a written description of how it is used, under what conditions, by whom, and with what monitoring. This request alone sometimes changes practice.

Raise a formal concern if safety is at stake. If you believe your child has been harmed or placed at risk by a restrictive practice, do not wait for the school's internal process to unfold. You can:

• Lodge a complaint directly with the Department of Education
• Contact the Office of the Inspector of Custodial Services if the practice involves physical restraint
• File a complaint with the Equal Opportunity Commission if the practice amounts to discriminatory treatment connected to disability
• Contact the Australian Human Rights Commission under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 if the practice amounts to disability-based discrimination

Engage independent advocacy. People with Disabilities WA (PWdWA) provides individual advocacy for situations involving safety concerns. The Autism Association of WA can assist with developing appropriate behaviour support plans that give schools evidence-based alternatives to reactive containment strategies.

The Documentation Imperative

In all of these situations, written records are what move complaints forward. Verbal conversations with teachers or the principal about restraint incidents are easily minimised or denied. A written record — your own log of what your child described, combined with any formal incident reports you obtain — is far harder to dismiss.

Your log should include dates, times, what your child said happened, any visible physical or emotional responses (distress, regression, anxiety around school), and any communications with school staff. Cross-reference this against the incident reports when you get them. Discrepancies are significant.

The Western Australia Disability Advocacy Playbook includes an evidence log template specifically designed for tracking restrictive practice incidents, alongside guidance on the formal complaint pathway from the school level through to the Equal Opportunity Commission. It also covers the IBP preparation process so you can push for a proactive behaviour support plan before the school defaults to reactive containment.

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