A report from a nonprofit law center claims the Iowa Boys State Training School is overusing seclusion rooms and restraints in dealing with troubled youth who are placed at the facility in Eldora. Nathan Kirstein, an attorney for Disability Rights Iowa, says there is no independent State licensure or oversight of the Boys State Training School.
The Training School, operated by the DHS, currently houses around 120 teenage boys. Kirstein says they are sometimes confined to seclusion rooms for over 24 hours at a time.
Disability Rights Iowa is NOT calling for the closure of the Boys State Training School, but Kirstein suggests youth with mental health needs should not be housed there. The report claims about two-thirds of the teens at the school have been diagnosed as having a serious mental illness.
