Being taken into seclusion is absolutely awful, scary and daunting.
When you see four people all walking towards you and
for me it was just a total freak-out because I knew what was happening.
No control, you have no control, you know you've got no control
and you can’t do anything.
I started off as a 16 year-old, sweet, innocent, naïve country girl
and worked in a very large institution in Levin.
Back in those days, we didn't call it seclusion
and there were no rules and regulations like there are now.
But we often referred to it as the timeout room.
We grabbed hold of the person under the arms
one person on each arm and one person on each leg
and into the room and dump on the bed.
Out you get as fast as you can and shut the door.
Today, of course, it's still a legal option for staff to use
when you're working in these really harsh environments
which is where this happens
it possibly will be happening every now and then.
Research has shown now that it can traumatise people
and does traumatise people.
I’m a classic example of somebody who it has traumatized.
On the day that it happened
my husband rang for help and we went into hospital.
I don't remember much else after that other than waking up
sitting on a seclusion bed is the next thing I remember
rocking myself to comfort...
after screaming and yelling, and fighting
telling people I wanted to see my husband.
I strongly believe that if they had listened to what I was saying
which was ‘I want my husband’
and they would have been able to accommodate that
that I would never have been secluded in the first place.
So I wouldn't have to live now with the trauma of knowing
that I had been in there.
So I want people to know that there are other ways of doing it.
Yes, I was demanding.
Yes, I was uninhibited.
Yes, I was aggressive.
I know all that.
I know what I would have been like as a ‘patient’ at the time.
I also know that if they’d listened and had let my husband come in
things would have been a bit better for me.
After I came out of seclusion
I was well enough to be transported out of the district
because staying in the place where I was was in my work environment.
So that was extremely embarrassing and awkward for everybody.
The main thing that helped me there was they allowed my husband to come with me.
That's what made the difference.
Then I came home.
Then I went back to work.
Then slowly, the two year mark, flashback sort of memories come.
That isolation, that sense of isolation, that sense of hopelessness
that sense of needing to smooth yourself.
All those sort of feelings come when I think about it.
I can’t stand hearing keys rattling.
Because that, to me, is a sign that they’re coming to open the door.
You know, they come in teams to open the door
to make sure that you don't attack them.
It's hard, it's been hard.
I want to try and stop it from happening to somebody else.
As a consumer advisor my role is to give the consumer perspective to the service.
Often the service has its demands from the Ministry or other places
and the person has their own demands coming from them.
Sometimes those two things don't mix that well together.
There are some collective things that do help lots of people:
being listened to is one of them;
one to one care, not a whole group of people coming in for you;
whānau, music, distraction, food.
Sometimes, sometimes people come in and they haven't eaten for days.
So there's lots of sensory stuff that can happen.
But you also have to have the right environment as well.
You know, we're talking about de-escalating people a lot of the time
before they go into seclusion.
There will be a restraint, or an attempt to de-escalate.
I guess that's one of the take home messages I want for people to watch
is that my advice would be to learn more than two ways of de-escalating somebody
because there is, there's lots of different ways
and you have to think outside the square.
I present, in my own organization, a training course that they do
to learn about de-escalation and restraint holds.
I give them a handout to start with and say:
'Hey, thanks for coming to learn how to do your job better
because when you get it wrong, it hurts.'
Then I show my little finger as an example
of a restraint hold that went wrong that now has given me permanent damage.
So it hurts on a lot of levels when the staff get it wrong.
It's much more than just the seclusion, it’s the whole culture.
It's the whole way that we work with people.
It's about person-centred care, trauma-informed, recovery-focused.
There's always going to be situations that have to be managed
and it's the way that we do that in the future moving forward.
We're not going to do it like we used to, we're going to do it differently
and hopefully that will create less traumatised people.