Kanagawa prefectural government reveals cases of abuse at care home for people with disabilities, residents locked in rooms and tied to wheelchairs for eight hours

By Barrier Free Japan with extracts from NHK and TV Kanagawa via Yahoo! Japan

May 14 2021

KANAGAWA – The Kanagawa prefectural government announced that the use of physical restraint on two people, a man and a woman, at a prefectural facility for the disabled has been recognized as abuse.

In February of this year, two residents, a man and a woman, were locked in their private rooms from the outside for more than eight hours a day at Nakai Yamayurien in Nakai Town.

According to the Kanagawa prefectural government, in February of this year, it was confirmed that twenty-two users of the Nakai Yamayurien facility for the disabled were physically restrained for more than eight hours, including being kept in locked rooms and tied to wheelchairs.

Of the twenty-two cases of prolonged physical restraint at Nakai Yamayurien, only two of them were found to be abusive. The prefectural government provided information to 11 cities and towns where the users reside, verified the results, and found that the actions used regarding two people, a man and a woman with severe behavioral disorders, constituted physical abuse.

The reasons given were that the two were restrained for a long period of time at night and that they did not meet the “temporary nature” of the requirements for physical restraint.

Nakai Yamayurien: “We understood that it was an urgent and unavoidable case for us to ensure safety, so we knew that the temporary nature of the restraint would be met even if it took a little longer. We are aware that you have pointed out that it could be made a little shorter, so we will take your suggestion seriously and work to reduce physical restraints in the future.

The prefectural government has been disclosing the status of physical restraints on its website since December last year in an effort to achieve zero physical restraints at its six prefectural facilities for the disabled.