Uses Made of a Mental Hygiene Clinic by a Boys’ Training School: How the Boys’ Farm and Training School at Shawbridge, Quebec Makes Referrals to and Uses the Treatment Recommendations of the Mental Hygiene Institute on Pine Avenue, Montreal

In the 1940s, The Boys' Farm and Training School, Shawbridge, Quebec, was operated for the re-education of boys who had delinquent and other behaviour problems. Most of the boys at the Training School were committed by the Juvenile Court in Montreal or by other law-enforcing agencies. The author points out that during the years of Second World War, the Juvenile Court had many boys examined at the Mental Hygiene Institute on Pine Avenue in Montreal before committing them to the Boys' Farm and Training School. The School found it helpful to return some of these boys for further psychiatric help. The author explains that when wartime shortages of staff eased off, the School began to make increasing use of the Institute's services. He explains that this latter development was noticeable during the winter of 1947-1948 when he became interested in social case work with boys. He was also interested in the Training School. He explains that he was asked by the Institute to carry some cases co-operatively with the School. While the author was working on these cases, he discovered that both agencies encountered several problems in connection with referrals from the School to the Institute. These referral problems were selected as basic topics for his investigation in this study. He points out that both agencies agreed to co-operate so as to make such an exploratory study possible. The aim of the study was to discover how these two agencies could work together more effectively than they had done in furthering the treatment of boys at the School.

Master's Thesis

McGill University

Montreal

1949

v-224p.

en