Minnesotans with disabilities continue to face harsh disciplinary techniques, including life-threatening prone restraints and seclusion, despite promises to end such practices in state-regulated facilities.
At a group home in Crystal, for example, a 33-year-old disabled woman was strapped to a restraint chair for up to nine hours a day without food or bathroom breaks, a practice that lasted for months. State regulators did not intervene until last month — more than three years after the home's operator informed authorities of the restraint chair.
Such stark findings, detailed in a 57-page report filed last week by a federal court monitor, are raising new questions about how well the state is monitoring care for the 35,000 Minnesotans with disabilities who receive services through nearly 1,300 state-licensed programs, homes and facilities.
Six years ago, the state came under harsh criticism after reports surfaced that developmentally disabled people in state facilities were being secluded and restrained with handcuffs and leg hobbles for acts as minor as touching a pizza box.
In response, the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) pledged to eliminate the practice — except in emergency cases, such as danger of physical harm — at all state-licensed programs and facilities that care for people with disabilities.
State officials say the use of physical restraints has dropped sharply in the last year and that they are taking other steps to improve care for those with physical and mental disabilities. "This is a massive undertaking and a critical one," said Lucinda Jesson, state commissioner of human services.
Nonetheless, the court monitor found that the practices still persist at community programs and group homes for the developmentally disabled. Statewide, a total of 963 people with disabilities were physically restrained between July 2013 and September of this year. In addition, 40 people were mechanically restrained and 70 were placed in seclusion rooms over the same period, according to his report.
The state has also received reports of 289 people subjected to prone restraints, a particularly dangerous technique in which a person is held facedown on the ground. Prone restraints are banned in state-licensed programs for the disabled because they can lead to serious injury and death by asphyxiation. While use of such restraints has fallen dramatically over the past year, with just one reported incident in September, disability advocates are alarmed that the practice has not been eliminated entirely.