Coroners, courts, regulators and inspectors have recorded what restraint does to the people it is used on. This casebook publishes those records as short, sourced case pages: what happened, what went wrong, and what it means for the people running the service.
Every entry states its confidence, what could not be verified, and where the source runs out. Where a case is still live, we hold it. Where a name cannot be justified, we do not print it. Publications are labelled as publications, because a national count is not an incident.
147 case entries and 47 publications.
Tilted back in a chair to get the medicine in
A psychiatric nurse held a patient down by tipping his chair backwards, then emptied a syringe into his mouth. He was struck off twelve years after the first…
PublicationWhat Northern Ireland now requires of a school that restrains a pupil
Statutory guidance issued in September 2023 makes notifying parents and recording the incident legal duties in every school in Northern Ireland, and prohibits mechanical restraint outright.
A decade of unlawful restraint, and no duty to tell the children
The High Court accepted that large numbers of children were unlawfully restrained in secure training centres for at least a decade, and held the state had no duty…
An 87-year-old’s wheelchair tipped backwards in a patient transport vehicle
A stroke patient died after his wheelchair was clamped by a crew member who had not been trained on that chair, and tipped over as the vehicle pulled…
Children restrained and locked in their flats, former staff said
Four former employees told BBC Wales that children at a Cardiff home were restrained on the floor and locked up unnecessarily.
Five adults, one child, three minutes face down
CCTV showed a 12-year-old autistic pupil held face down on the floor of a school calming room for three minutes by five members of staff.
Five boys, five sets of broken bones
Leaked documents showed five teenagers at a young offender institution were left with fractures from restraint, and the complaints against the officer involved went nowhere.
Five minutes face down on the floor of an exhibition centre
Security guards restrained a man in an acute psychotic episode face down for about five minutes. He was dead two hours later.
Ground holds the staff had never been trained in
Ofsted found a children's home where staff used holds outside the provider's own model, injured a child, and kept a manager under investigation on the rota.
Headlocks filmed at a special school rated good
Undercover filming at an independent school for pupils with special educational needs showed children put in headlocks and pushed to the floor, and staff mocking them.
Held on a bedroom floor so a vaccine could be given
A care home manager and two staff held a woman with a learning disability on the floor while a Covid-19 vaccination was given through her clothing. The manager…
Put back on his front because he was banging his head
A man in acute behavioural disturbance was Tasered, held face down, moved onto his side, then returned to face down for eight more minutes.
Restrained and strip searched on arrival, found dead the next day
A jury found that the manner of the control and restraint and of the strip search, and a failure to de-escalate, contributed to the death of a man…
PublicationRestraint rose while the wards emptied
BBC File on 4 counted just over 38,000 uses of restraint in England in 2019, up from 22,000 in 2017, per its analysis of the NHS Digital returns,…
Sedated through the night at 35 per cent oxygen
A man with Down's syndrome was sedated to manage agitated behaviour at life-threatening oxygen levels, then left unobserved for nearly four hours.
PublicationSixteen thousand restrictive interventions a month, counted as one thing
According to CQC, an average of 16,462 restrictive interventions a month were recorded in England's mental health inpatient care for 2024/25, 24% up on the year before, though…
Ten times the prescribed dose, for four days
An 88-year-old man with dementia was given ten times his antipsychotic dose after his medicine changed from tablets to liquid, and an inquest found the error contributed to…
The wheelchair was bolted down; she was not
An 84-year-old care home resident was thrown from her wheelchair in a patient transport ambulance because the occupant harness was never fitted.
A label one service understood and the other had never heard
A man in acute agitation was restrained face down in a hospital until sedation worked, and arrested within a minute of being turned. The delay began in a…
An approved hold, five children in pain, and a warning a year earlier
Ofsted found restraint used to secure compliance at a secure children's home, a year after enforcement action over the same practice.
Dragged across the bedroom floor on a night shift
A care home nurse filmed dragging a frail resident across the floor was convicted of ill-treatment and struck off.
Nineteen months in one hospital, nine in segregation in another
An autistic woman was sometimes locked in. No court or regulator has ruled on her care.
PublicationThe year when 14 of 24 custody deaths followed restraint
The IOPC's 2023/24 census records 24 deaths in or following police custody. Fourteen of those people had force used on them, and all fourteen were physically restrained.
PublicationWhy nobody can quote a national restraint-death figure
A statutory investigation into deaths in mental health inpatient care found services recording deaths differently, with no shared terminology and no way to compare one provider with another.
Bound and gagged in her own home during a removal attempt
A 40-year-old woman died of asphyxiation after officers bound her and gagged her with tape. The three officers tried over her death were acquitted.
He was heard calling for help for seventy minutes
An elderly man in respite care became wedged in a gap in his nursing bed and died of positional asphyxia. A carer heard him and did not open…
Thirty minutes on the floor while a child said they could not breathe
A children's home was rated inadequate after a child was held on the ground for half an hour, said they could not breathe properly, and had no recorded…
PublicationThree deaths, and a hospital that could not show the care it gave
Norfolk's safeguarding review of three learning-disabled patients at a private hospital found restraint and seclusion used as a model of care, and no records for hundreds of days…
A bed rail left down, twice, and a death
An 84-year-old care home resident fell from bed twice because the rail her plan required was not raised. She died three weeks after the second fall.
A thumb bent back on a medical ward
A staff nurse stopped a patient resisting care by bending his thumb towards his wrist, then called him a naughty boy. A second patient was pushed onto a…