Children with learning disabilities in a school in north-east London were left locked in rooms for hours without food and drink, an investigation has found.
CCTV footage shows pupils at Whitefield School in north-east London being forced into padded ‘calming rooms’ – where they are hit, thrown to the floor and left to sit in their own vomit.
About 40 children with severe mental disorders were locked in the rooms for hours, often without food or drink, the BBC reported.
The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, has said she has pushed for a formal review to be taken.
New leadership at the school found the footage, which reveals years of child abuse between 2014 and 2017, and shared it with police.
A police investigation into the video ended this year without any charges being brought, however safeguarding investigations commissioned by the school concluded six staff members had abused pupils.
The video shows distressed children hurting themselves repeatedly, with one boy injuring his own nose in the process.
Another boy desperately throws his own shoes towards the video camera in a bid to get a teacher’s attention. A staff member swoops in and whacks the boy in the head as he tries to calm him down.
This was the only time teachers intervened while children were trapped in these ‘calming rooms’, the broadcaster reported.
Around 40 children were subject to this hours-long solitary confinement, with 500 hours worth of footage being published showing the treatment of six children, with permission from their parents.
‘You wouldn’t even do that to a dog,’ said one mother after watching the CCTV for the first time.
The abuse went unnoticed until 2017, when Ofsted discovered the seclusion rooms and downgraded the school from its previous ‘outstanding’ rating.
Despite Ofsted’s discovery, no investigation was carried out into the harm suffered by children in the calming rooms, the BBC said.
Government guidance stipulates that disruptive pupils must only be removed for a ‘limited’ amount of time and only in ‘suitable’ facilities.
The job of reviewing the footage was left to a single teaching assistant, who herself tormented a child by shoving them into the corner of a room with a rugby training pad.
She later told the investigation she had become ‘desensitised’ to the CCTV footage and that it was ‘hard’ to contact the school’s leadership as a teaching assistant.
Families reported their children developed PTSD after the incidents involved, with one later being detained in a mental hospital after sustaining severe emotional damage.
The Flourish Trust, which runs Whitefield, says it has learned from the failings in this case, while the Metropolitan Police is continuing to conduct ‘wider enquiries’ about Whitefield, unrelated to abuse.
Ofsted said responsibility for investigating the harm caused to children was with the Department for Education, as regulator, and the school’s local council Waltham Forest.
Waltham Forest also says it has offered counselling to families, while families told the BBC that wide-ranging help was needed to support their children with the abuse they suffered.
In a statement, the Children’s Commissioner said: ‘The experiences of these children are absolutely appalling. My heart goes out to them and their families. No child should ever be physically restrained under such conditions and with such a lack of compassion, especially those who are so vulnerable.
‘Since the allegations of abuse at Whitefield School first came to light I have pushed for a formal review of the circumstances to be carried out. This was agreed but it must now happen without delay to uncover where children who were so badly failed could have been kept safe.’
She added that guidance and regulation about restraining children should be looked at and earlier support is needed for children with additional needs and vulnerabilities and better training for teachers managing them.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
