Diana Trejo has always managed to manage the seizures of her son with autism spectrum disorder. But this year, she had to ask for help. Her 11-year-old son was screaming, hitting his head and thighs, throwing himself on his bed and crying for hours until he threw up. “I got to a point where I didn’t know what to do anymore,” she says.
An emergency intervention service came to his rescue: AEO mobile (access, evaluation, orientation), intended for Montrealers with an intellectual disability (ID) or an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Made up of eight specialized educators and a psychoeducator, the team intervenes at home when a crisis occurs or when a situation worsens.
Diana Trejo and her boy enjoyed AEO support for almost four weeks this summer. A specialized educator, Abdelghani Fettouhi, communicated daily with the family. “We saw each other almost every two days,” said the speaker, met at Diana Trejo’s home in September.
Abdelghani Fettouhi was able to witness the child’s crises. “We tried to understand why he was doing it,” he explains. He does not speak, but he points. He takes by the hand too, sometimes. The special educator offered Diana Trejo ways to calm things down.
“It’s a lot of trial and error,” says the 32-year-old mother, who looks after her boy on her own with the help of his parents. “But it helps. Her seizures are much less than when they started. »
Once his term ended, Abdelghani Fettouhi directed the family to another service. A special education teacher visits Diana Trejo every week.
A service born of the pandemic
The CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal launched AEO mobile on April 4, 2020, at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the establishment wanted to offer help to families confined to the house with their child with an ID or an ASD.
“When the services closed on March 13 […], we immediately said to ourselves: “What will happen with the families that we don’t know and who are on the waiting list?” We said to ourselves that we had to have an emergency service, ”said the head of AEO, Yolande Bujold.
A team was put in place and contacted all the people registered at the DI-ASD services access desk in the Montreal region. — As an indication, as of December 19, 945 people were on this waiting list, including 42 with a high priority level. — When a crisis arose, a specialist educator came to the family.
Sainte-Justine called us [dernièrement] for a family who arrived in Quebec in September and came to the emergency room three times in the same week
Since its creation, AEO mobile has intervened 363 times, including 125 times following an emergency call that must be taken within a maximum of three days, indicates the CIUSSS.
The service is punctual and of short duration. “Sometimes we just do a crisis intervention, we structure things, we wrap it up properly and the family is able to continue,” says Yolande Bujold.
The team also carries out large-scale operations. She was called in to help when people with intellectual disabilities were forced to leave their place of accommodation, Les foyers de la création, in Montreal last fall.
“We received a message from the ministry in the morning indicating that the owner was evicting a dozen people at noon,” says Yolande Bujold. We arrived there at 10 a.m. There were ten [d’intervenants] with me. I called the public curator, the parents. We packed up with the team. By 4:30 p.m., no one was left in the place. All the tenants had been escorted to a new place of accommodation.
According to Yolande Bujold, hospitals also often use AEO. “Sainte-Justine called us [dernièrement] for a family who arrived in Quebec in September and who came to the emergency room three times in the same week, she says. These are people who are not yet in the network because they are new immigrants. The only entrance they know is the hospital emergency room. »
The specialized educators of AEO mobile support the social workers of hospitals, in particular those of Notre-Dame and Verdun. They can help them understand the behavior of patients with ID or ASD who are hospitalized for physical health problems, explains Constantin Georgiades, head of physical health psychosocial services, hospital mission at the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l ‘Island of Montreal.
He gives as an example the recent case of a man who was having numerous seizures in the hospital, in particular because of frequent blood tests and blood pressure measurements. “It was just too much stimulation for him and, basically, he didn’t need it at that range,” said Constantin Georgiades. Thanks to AEO, the hospital’s social workers discovered the true “personality of the client” and were able to assess it, he says.
Diana Trejo doesn’t regret asking AEO mobile for help. She wants her boy’s behavior to “change” and that he be happy. “I don’t want that to stop him from living a life that’s still good for him. »