Eligibility for Milieu Therapy

"Help first the most suffering" (motto of Compagnons d' Emmaus).

"Ethical practice requires that counselors determine with whom and in what circumstances they are able to be effective" (Corey, Corey & Callanan).

Apart from restrictions exposed below, we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, marital status, handicap, age or money.

Children for whom we will consider application :

are those who have chances to be cured by milieu therapy, i. e. :

Children suffering from severe emotional disturbances : schizophrenia, autism,

bipolar disorder, incest victims.

Children suffering from a physical disease when no physiological nor genetic cause was found : cancer, anorexia, epilepsy, asthma, deafness, mental retardation, headaches, obesity, and in general any pathology without a known cause. The cause then might be emotional (repressed emotions as a consequence of abuse), and medical treatments bring no cure.

We will consider any hard-to-place child.

A child is welcome to this project only if ce wants to come, and this only after we have had a chance to know ce and feel that we are willing to be committed to ce, and ce has had the opportunity to visit us so to form an opinion and to be able to make ces own decision free from any pressure because ces life is at stake, this before any other considerations, like money and what other people want : relatives, professionals, officials (please see the Intake Process page).

Children for whom we won't consider application :

children with conditions for which chances for recovery to a normal state thru our means are practically void :

Children with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and any definitive damage or abnormality to the brain. We consider that autistic children have no damage to their brain, and as such are curable as proven by Bruno Bettelheim, unless autism in them started after being vaccinated : then in such cases it is possible that some part(s) of their brain was damaged by the vaccine(s) (please see the Vaccinations Harmful for Children page).

Children by whom no member of our team feels interested : all children, whatever their condition is, are in need of being loved and cared for thru personalized relationships. If nobody with our project experiences such feelings for a given child, we can't consider taking this child because we won't be in the emotional condition for fulfilling our duties toward ce. Children are in need to be loved by at least one adult, and they can feel if the adult experiences genuine pleasure in their company, because loving means having pleasure to be with. When this emotional asset is missing in us for a given child regretfully we are helpless for that person.

Children for whom we have serious reservations :

Children for whom we can't provide therapeutic conditions :

- children forced to act against their will while we would have no legal protection to ask for them, like children forced to see their parents because their parents want it so and are entitled by law to demand it

- generally all situations when children are denied the right to self-determination are counter-therapeutic (i. e. damaging to the children) and as such are out of our scope

- extremely violent children or of delinquent behavior when we could not guarantee safety of others, as we operate as a non-restrictive home.

- children having been submitted to electro-shocks, because of high risk that their brain have been damaged in addition to the sufferings due to this kind

of "scientific" torture, thus destroying more of their already low chances for

recovery. Usually safety requires that in any building all precautions have to be taken so that no domestic electricity enter any human body : electro-shocks consist of deliberately submitting a most often non-consentive human being who is already in bad condition to a hazardous and painful ordeal, especially as it aims at having electricity travel thru the brain, and the positive results are never proven.

It seems that the "professionals" who prescribe such a "treatment" for their patients never tried it on themselves first to see what consequences resulted in themselves. "As director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry in Bethesda, Maryland, nearly every week I receive phone calls, letters, or have personal interviews with patients who have suffered brain damage and permanent mental dysfunction from shock treatment. The story is typically uniform" (P. R. Breggin, M.D.).

- children having been submitted to behavior conditioning because it reinforces alienation from themselves.

- bed-ridden, or AIDS/HIV infected children : admittance considered only if these degradations seems to have a strong psychosomatic component.

- children who were forced to take psychotropic medications because those drugs having the same components as illegal drugs (cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines...) as Dr. Peter R. Breggin pointed out, they lead to become addicted and the damage done to such children is all the worse when such intoxications are started early in the lives of the victims and they have no right to refuse them.

Age limits :

No lower limit : intake may be considered at the youngest age possible because the younger the child is, the better and the quicker are the chances for recovery.

Referrals for a baby or a toddler are thus considered but with the reservation that the younger the child is, the more careful our family assessment has to be, especially as no real interview can be done with a non-verbal very young person : the link with the mother has to be particularly well considered. However, even when they are too young to speak, very young children most often understand what is told to them and they can answer in their own ways with a facial expression or by their behavior so that their will and their needs can be understood, and a decision can be reached after having perceived what the child wants.

Upper age limit : older children and teenagers considered only if there is no very young child at the location.

rev. 2013