Robin has been diagnosed with autism and mild intellectual disability. He also has difficult challenging behaviors, such that he can sometimes hurt himself and become outspoken.
Locking up someone like Robin is not just against the law - it's also ineffective if you want to reduce challenging behavior in the long run, according to research in the field.
- If you use coercive measures to deal with challenging behavior, you increase the challenging behaviors. We must work not to add injury, not to add trauma, says Petra Björne, PhD in cognitive science who has researched challenging behaviors.
"Be aware that you are not allowed to lock in"Inger Adolfsson is the former operations manager at Robin's accommodation, and the one who started with the lock-ins.
- We are well aware that no one can lock anyone in. After all, there was a reason why we consulted with many and that we also played ball with IVO, because it is actually a very, very unusual decision we made. But that was for the person's best.
Elisabeth Andersson, social manager in Gnösjö municipality, admits that in a few cases the door on Robin was locked.
- For us, there is a big difference between whether you lock someone in or if you say you lock in someone, she says.
"No comments at all"Elisabeth Andersson also refers to IVO's supervision visit that was made at the accommodation last spring.
- IVO has, after all, had no views at all on the operations we have. They also said that, it is not in the decision, but verbally they said they saw this activity as an example.
After the interview Elisabeth Andersson writes in an email to Assignment Review that:
"We see that Robin's self-harm has progressively decreased significantly, which has also meant that the goal of not having to lock Robin since a while back has more or less already been achieved."