Something landed in one of my three inboxes yesterday, late afternoon, that I had to read over and over again. It wasn’t because I had a pretty exhausting day…it was merely because I couldn’t believe the words that were jumping off of my screen. Joe LaMountain, who is the Director of Grassroots Advocacy at the Epilepsy Foundation of America sent an email, and I’ll quote…

“Keep Children Safe in School…Urge your Senators to cosponsor S. 2860 and your Representatives to cosponsor H.R. 4247.”

The email goes on to proclaim today, Friday, February 26, 2010 as a National Call-In Day for these pieces of legislation for “The Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act”. This new bill in Congress has been endorsed by the Epilepsy Foundation. Why? If you click on some of the links which I will give you in just a moment, you can read and see that many of the hundreds, if not thousands of children that are restrained and injured each year have Epilepsy. They are bruised, cut and traumatized. In many cases…educators and school officials don’t know the first thing about Epilepsy, so this is their first reaction to a seizure.

Photo courtesy of Joe LaMountain, Sparklight Communications

Reports have detailed hundreds of abusive uses of the practice, most frequently on children aged 6-10 and disproportionately on children with disabilities like epilepsy.