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For the past 18 years, the Centre pour l’enfance en Santé Mentale (CÉSAME) has been offering hope to North Shore parents whose young children may sometimes suffer from a wide range of behavioural difficulties, such as tantrums, developmental and language problems, or perhaps just shyness.
Parenting is demanding
CÉSAME is all about early child stimulation. Even though raising children brings immeasurable joy to parents, the transformations observed in families over the past decades are numerous. Parenting is also at times very demanding and it is important that parents have access to support allowing them to fulfill their role.
Staff at CÉSAME say they realize that each child’s life is unique, that parents who are overwhelmed need external support, and that with warmth, compassion and tenderness, all children can develop and flourish. They also note that the family plays a pivotal role in a child’s education and development and that more than ever, help from the community is needed to assist parents in achieving their greatest potential.
For children and adults
CÉSAME’s services are for children from two to five years old, who may be at risk of developing mental health problems. The children may be oppositional, aggressive, impulsive, withdrawn, or have attention deficit and hyperactivity, autism, attachment difficulties, difficulties with socialization or communication problems. CÉSAME helps these children increase their basic intellectual and socio-affective skills, while assisting them in acquiring socially adequate behaviour.
While offering mental health resources for children, the group also offers resources for parents who can often feel isolated with their problems. Among those who have benefited from CÉSAME’s services are many families who live in difficulty because of poverty, a low level of education and social isolation. There are also young parents. CÉSAME accords such families priority.
Every child important
“We’ve had children who are just very attached with mom,” says Marsha Baxter, who is an animator at CÉSAME. “Maybe they’re not in playgroups anywhere else. Maybe they don’t have the chance to be with other children.” CÉSAME’s services can also sometimes be preventive. “Every child who comes here has something they need to work on,” adds Caroline Bastien, CÉSAME’s executive-director.
According to Baxter, a call will often come in from parents or from professionals at a CLSC or even a children’s hospital. “They’ll say, for example, they have a daughter who’s three years old and she’s having a temper tantrum all the time,” she said.
“So we take a bit of information and go to the parent’s house and we’ll observe the child in his or her environment and determine whether CÉSAME can really help this child, or maybe she doesn’t really need it. If so, then we’ll say the child would do well with a stimulation workshop and perhaps the parent would like to participate in the discipline workshop, because there are groups for the parents also.”
Long history
CÉSAME started in the early 1990s when a grant request was made to the Régie régionale des Laurentides to create a new organization to deal with an increasingly urgent need for mental health services by young local families on the North Shore. Since then, it has become a well-established fixture in St. Eustache and the Lower Laurentians area, mainly serving the MRC Deux-Montagnes, as well as the western part of the City of Laval.
CÉSAME has strong roots in the North Shore community and receives support and encouragement from local businesses, social organizations, as well as from the municipal, provincial and federal governments. Their financial contributions have allowed CÉSAME to continue offering its services to the community on an ongoing basis. For additional information on CÉSAME’s services, call 450-623-5677.
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