Raising Family Health to New Heights

SECOND EDITION WELL-BEING C I U S S S W EST -C ENTRAL M ONTREAL Raising family health to new heights FREE Well being July 2018.indd 1 04/09/2018 10:37 Discover our services Message from Message from CIUSSS leadership ..........................................................3 When a crisis hits home: Helping families of youths in distress .......... 4 Parenting a teenager, it’s a Mission imPossible! .................................. 6 Happy students, happy families ............................................................8 CLSC services .........................................................................................10 Child Psychiatry at the JGH ..................................................................12 Super-clinics: Superior access to frontline health services ................. 13 Family Medicine Groups ......................................................................14 Super-clinics ..........................................................................................15 Test centres ...........................................................................................15 Home care .............................................................................................16 Keep an eye out for glaucoma ............................................................18 New ombudsman sees complaints as stepping-stones to better care .....19 CIUSSS sites .........................................................................................20 ciusss-centreouestmtl.gouv.qc.ca/en Glenn J. Nashen, Associate Director, Communications and Media Relations | Stephanie Malley, Chief, Communications and Media Relations Laure-Elise Singer, Editor-in-chief | Henry Mietkiewicz, Senior writer | Marie-Josée Lavoie and Wilma Elalouf, Translators | Eliot Edwards, Graphic design JGH Audio Visual Services, Howard Kay, Slajdana Markovic and Jennifer Timmons, Photography | Lisa Blobstein, Cristina Sanza and Jennifer Timmons, Contributors | Cover: Photo and design by Cristina Sanza. Shown, Mina Ladores, Head Nurse, Herzl Family Practice Centre and Herzl Walk-in Centre with Liam Kiorpelidis. ° 2 ° Well being July 2018.indd 2 04/09/2018 10:38 Message Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg from and Francine Dupuis Dear readers, Welcome to the latest edition of Well-being, a Well-being features articles about our exceptional magazine to help familiarize you with the wide range staff and users, as well practical information that of health care and social services that are available will help you make the most of the services that to you in the Integrated Health and Social Services we offer. Included in this issue are articles that University Network for West-Central Montreal focus on frontline services, reflecting our CIUSSS’s (CIUSSS West-Central Montreal). commitment not only to helping individuals, but to Our goal in this publication is to help you—as a caring for the well-being of families. patient, client, resident or visitor—to more efficiently You can pick up a free copy of this magazine at any navigate the healthcare system and gain prompt access one of our CIUSSS establishments. With its focus to the services that are best suited to your needs. on youth, this edition of the publication will also Our network is comprised of over 30 sites, including be distributed to grade six students at the English CLSCs, long-term care facilities, rehabilitation centres Montreal School Board schools within the territory. and an acute-care hospital. These establishments Since proper care starts with clear communication, offer services that have been developed to meet your we hope Well-being will complement our online needs—everything from breastfeeding clinics to channels in guiding you and your family promptly hotlines for those affected by cancer to support groups and easily to our available health care and social for troubled youths. services. Sincerely, Lawrence Rosenberg, M.D., Ph.D. Francine Dupuis President and CEO Associate Executive Director CIUSSS West-Central Montreal CIUSSS West-Central Montreal ° 3 ° Well being July 2018.indd 3 04/09/2018 10:38 When a crisis hits home Helping families of youths in distress axim’s family was running That psychological distress can trigger a desperately low on options sense of emergency. If an intervention Min helping the troubled does not take place quickly, there is a 13-year old. Their home life had risk of ruptured ties, of a runaway, deteriorated to the point that of crime, or a possible suicide they communicated only by attempt.” screaming—or not at all. At The urgency of such crisis school, the situation was situations places the no less bleak: Maxim was social workers and hyperactive, abusing psycho-educator who various substances, and form the CAFE team had expressed suicidal ‘on call’ 365 days of thoughts. He was sent the year to intervene home nearly every within two hours of day with a note about receiving a phone his ‘inappropriate call. They respond behaviour’, until during school hours the day he wasn’t and evenings, from sent home. Instead, 2:00 to 9:00 p.m., he found himself at a directly at the scene hospital. of the event. “The “We ended up at the service is accessible,” Saint-Justine Emergency notes Ms. Menard. “Our Department at the insistence team operates in the natural of the school’s psychosocial environment of the youth, be worker,” says Maxim’s mother, it at school, at home, or at their Arlette. “It had been going so badly community hangouts. That way, at school, at home. For ages we’d been we are well placed to prevent further shuffled from one service to another, deterioration and reduce the sense of but Maxim was not getting the help he emergency. We want to avoid a situation by our medical system, we entered the needed. He had been on medication for where exasperated parents throw up program. And what a blessing that we his Attention DeficitHyperactivity Disorder their hands and say ‘I’ve had enough’.” did— it saved our family.” (ADHD), but then his doctor was no longer Maxim’s parents had just about reached available, so he stopped taking it. We had CAFE (Crise-Ado-Famille-Enfance) is led that threshold with the distressed teen. met so many healthcare professionals, and by a dedicated team of experts in crisis, “We were at the end of our tether,” each time I had to retell the story. I simply who help children aged 5 to 17 and their recalls Arlette. “Our home environment couldn’t take it any more.” families once they are on the brink of had become so negative. We were each a family breakdown. “We see families Once the team of physicians and social fixed in our positions and couldn’t speak who have lost control of their child, they workers at the hospital ER dealt with the to one another anymore. That was have no respect for the rules, no positive immediate threat, they directed Arlette to compounded by the notes coming home exchanges,” says Sophie Menard, Team the CAFE program. “It was the first time every day from the school telling us only Lead of the CAFE program. “Families we’d heard of the service, and despite our what Maxim was doing wrong. That that find themselves in a deadlocked skepticism after years of feeling neglected negativity contaminated our home to the relationship are often feeling helpless. ° 4 ° Well being July 2018.indd 4 04/09/2018 10:38 point where we said, ‘we can’t do this she says. In subsequent weeks, through involved in arranging a consultation any longer, we need to breathe, Maxim Nicolas’s continuous support and flexible for the teen with a physician who needs to leave our home’.” approach, says Maxim’s mother, the social specialized in the condition. He also worker guided the family in establishing proposed a lifeguarding course for the The aim of CAFE is to find alternative boundaries. youth, which Maxim dove into with solutions to a placement or a report to great energy. the Director of Youth Protection (DYP), The CAFE counsellors work individually ideally ones that keep the youth within with families for up to three months, as “Nicolas was full of good ideas and their family environment. “When the needed, to tackle the underlying causes of initiatives. All of these strategies, along situation becomes too heavy, it escalates the crisis. They create a structure within the with the medication, have completely and reaches its head,” says Ms. Menard. home as a safety net to avoid a recurrence. transformed our son,” attests Arlette. “That can become a trigger for change.” “Our role is to provide tools that can help “Maxim feels valued, which has done re-orient a family mired in dysfunction,” wonders for his confidence and self- For Maxim and his family, that change says Mr. Masse. “They learn how to resolve esteem. In the past, he felt he was came in the form of Nicolas Masse, problems, negotiate rules, ease conflicts, always failing, but now he feels he is a social worker for the CAFE program. and cope with changes and transitions. good, which has been very motivating. Arlette says that she is astonished, When a family has faith that we can work Friends at school have approached him looking back, that the many counsellors together to improve situation, it brings to tell him that he has changed so much. her son had met in years’ past had been back the light of hope.” He stays calm and attentive in class and women. “Maxim needed a masculine he is doing his homework, which has figure. He was wary after so many failed “With our support, a shift takes place in helped his grades. Maxim is approaching interventions, so initially he was a bit the home atmosphere, in the quality of everything with a positive attitude. These defensive, but he quickly developed a family interactions, so that parents and changes at home, at school, in his leisure strong and trusting relationship with their children feel they can communicate time, they are all feeding in to a positive Nicolas. Nicolas didn’t make us any more freely and effectively,” explains upward spiral in Maxim’s life.” promises, but from the very beginning Mr. Masse. In parallel, says Arlette, he set about restoring Maxim’s self- Mr. Masse took steps to remedy the The CAFE counsellors are based at CLSC image, encouraging him, validating school front.

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