What happened
B, a 16-year-old boy with autism and Down’s syndrome, was placed by his local education authority at a private residential special school when he was nine, and stayed for two and a half years. The school took children with moderate to severe learning disabilities and communication difficulties.
B has a congenital heart defect and a hearing impairment, and limited communication. His parents were concerned that he might have atlantoaxial instability because of his Down’s syndrome, which means pressure on his neck carried an increased risk of serious injury.
He was repeatedly restrained by staff, including ground holds on the floor. Even on the limited records, Leigh Day found he may have been subjected to 300 physical restraints or more, including up to 52 ground holds. Some incidents lasted as long as 32 minutes, and carpet burns, scratches and bruising were recorded. His parents withdrew him because they did not feel the school could safeguard him.
The outcome
The claim alleged negligence and breach of Articles 3 and 8. The trust that ran the school went into voluntary liquidation and was dissolved during the action, which made his complete educational records hard to obtain.
An out-of-court settlement was reached in August 2018. The defendant made no admissions of liability but agreed to pay damages; the figure was not disclosed. Because B is unlikely to have capacity to manage his own finances, the court agreed the compensation could be paid into a Personal Injury Trust managed by his parents.
What went wrong
The volume is the finding. Three hundred restraints in two and a half years, with incidents running to 32 minutes, is not a school managing a crisis. It is a school where restraint had become the model of care.
Ofsted, on an unannounced inspection while he was still there, found the management of challenging behaviour ineffective, the number of restraints high, and their use not adequately monitored. It rated the school inadequate for behaviour and personal development, welfare, health and safety, and leadership and management.
What it teaches
Count the restraints and look at the duration. If the number is in the hundreds and nobody has a plan to reduce it, the setting has normalised restraint, and the recording is the only thing that will show it.
For a child with Down’s syndrome, a hold near the neck is a high-risk procedure, not a routine one. That is a question to ask before a placement starts, not after an incident.
The trust dissolved and the records went with it. A settlement without admissions leaves no findings for the next family to read.
Questions for the room
- That many restraints in two and a half years. What number would have triggered a review, and who should have been counting?
- You are the member of staff recording a 32-minute ground hold. What do you write, and what do you expect to happen next?
- Ofsted rated the school inadequate while he was still a pupil. What should the placing authority have done with that rating?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. Both sources are the same firm’s account of its own settlement, so they count as one, and the second, on Lexology, returned an access error and could not be read.
No figure or court approval is available, and the settlement involved no admission of liability. The restraint figures are the claimant’s analysis of incomplete records, not an agreed count.
B is anonymised in the proceedings and stays anonymised here. The school is not named.
Our school training covers restraint reduction in education settings, including how to read restraint records for patterns like this one.
Sources
- Leigh Day, Case settled for child who was physically restrained at private special school, 13 August 2018
- Lexology, Leigh Day article on the settlement, 13 August 2018 (not retrieved)
Reviewed 20 October 2026.