6(B)(iv). Opařany Children’s Psychiatric Hospital

The last remaining cage bed was reportedly removed from this children’s hospital at the end of February 2013. According to staff it had not been used much, and when it had, it was used for children with intellectual disabilities. The director explained how cage beds “would be dangerous for children without intellectual disabilities […] because they would move”.

The director was dismissive of cage beds for any children, saying that staff prefer talking to patients or using seclusion rooms and in “extreme cases” using straps, although this was said to be rare. For upset children, “most doctors prefer medication,” she explained. Her view was that more staff were needed to take better care of the children, and more psychologists to help calm them down.

Staff told the monitoring team that some of the new seclusion rooms had not been used and others were used infrequently. To their surprise, staff had managed to handle children who would previously have been placed in cage beds without resorting to any form of restraint. There seemed to be other reasons for the shift in staff attitudes. A change in staff shift times had reportedly had a beneficial effect on staff behaviour. Staff gradually considered it too early to put children in cage beds at the end of the afternoon shift when it ended at 7pm. After the shift times were changed to end at 9pm, it became too late to put them in cage beds because they were all asleep anyway.