Inclusion Daily Express -- Review Details Problems That Led To Girl's Restraint Death

Inclusion Daily Express Logo

International Disability Rights News Service
Click here for today's headlines & home page

Keeping advocates informed, inspired and connected since 1999.
Click here for daily or weekly delivery . . . OR
Try Inclusion Daily Express for ten days FREE . . .

Review Details Problems That Led To Girl's Restraint Death
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
February 21, 2007

RICE LAKE, WISCONSIN--A review into practices at a Rice Lake day treatment program describes the horrific chain of events that led up to the death of a 7-year-old girl, and suggests that more needs to be done to prevent similar deaths from happening at other centers the clinic continues to operate.

The Rice Lake Chronotype reports that it has obtained a copy of the completed review into the death of Angellika Arndt, who had diagnoses of reactive attachment disorder, a mood disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The girl died on May 26, one day after staff members placed her facedown in a "control hold" at the Rice Lake Day Treatment Center as a consequence for gargling milk.

A medical examiner ruled Angellika's death a homicide due to "complications from chest compression asphyxiation".

Angellika had been at the program for just one month, during which time she had been restrained in the prone position on at least nine separate days.

Following the girl's death, Northwest Guidance and Counseling Clinic Inc. pleaded no contest to one felony count of negligent abuse of a resident, and 29-year-old staff member Brad Rideout pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of negligent abuse of a patient.

Rideout is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

The state shut down the day program, and demanded that Northwest issue a corrective action plan. After the state rejected two plans, Northwest announced that it would not reopen the facility.

But psychiatrist Randall Cullen, who was hired by the state to investigate practices at the clinic, suggested that much more must be done to make sure deaths like Angellika's do not happen again in one of the 12 other centers that Northwest operates.

Cullen noted that standard practice regarding physical restraints requires that children should only be restrained when their behavior presents a danger to themselves or others, and not as a form of punishment. Even then, children should only to be restrained for one minute for each year of their age, for a maximum of 15 minutes.

Through interviews and reviews of documents, Cullen found that 7-year-old Angellika was restrained for such things as standing up fast, turning quickly in an aggressive manner, throwing herself back in her chair, refusing to move, refusing to sit as told, putting her hands down the front of her pants, and kicking her shoe off her foot and across the room. She had been placed in the prone "control hold" on nine different days for more than 15 minutes each time. Two of those times she was restrained for more than an hour and a half.

Cullen found that the girl was on at least five medications, some of which had side effects that could have contributed to her death. He also concluded that many of the demands the staff placed on Angellika likely set her up to fail, causing her to act in ways that they would then react to by restraining her.

"The unrealistic demands for total body control, sitting perfectly still in a proscribed manner, seem to invite oppositional behaviors," he wrote.

Hugh Davis, executive director of Wisconsin Family Ties, told the Chronotype that physically restraining children that have already been traumatized can make them more aggressive.

"Using prone restraint is viewed as treatment, and it's not," Davis said. "It's a failure of treatment."

Related:
"State's mental health system fails girl" (Rice Lake Chronotype)
http://www.chronotype.com/newarticle.asp?T=L&ArticleID=11558
"Angellika Arndt, 7, Died After Ninth Restraint At Clinic" (Inclusion Daily Express Archives)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/restraints/wi/angellika.htm

Click here for top of this page

Purchase this story for your website or newsletter . . .

Here's what subscribers say about Inclusion Daily Express. . .

Keeping advocates informed, inspired and connected since 1999.
Click here for daily or weekly delivery . . . OR
Try Inclusion Daily Express for ten days FREE . . .

Get your news here!