Revue de presse

Nature provides therapeutic touch
Farm offers summer camp for teens with autism

SUSAN SCHWARTZ
The Gazette Monday,
July 30, 2007

A partnership between an innovative therapeutic farm in the Eastern Townships and the Montreal Children's Hospital has made for a rewarding - and fun - summer-camp experience for a group of Montreal teenagers who have autism spectrum disorders.

The young people had been working on their social skills, a problem for people with autism, in a group at the Children's; the psychiatrists, social worker and psychologists who work with them saw the potential in a stay at Le Bel Agneau, as the farm is called.

Le Bel Agneau makes much of the relationship between nature, animals and humans - there are two dogs on the farm, four horses and a flock of sheep - and uses zootherapy and other techniques to help people learn skills to make them "shepherds of their own lives," as owners Marc Belanger and Suzanne Martel explain it. The two have a range of skills: he is trained in zootherapy and equine therapy, and Martel, a longtime teacher, has taught workshops for children with special needs; she also does yoga and massage therapy.

Among the activities during their recent stay, the young people worked at shepherding; in working with the sheep they learned leadership skills. They groomed the animals, did yoga and took nature walks. Fishing, swimming, arts and crafts work and music rounded out their days and opportunities for them to interact socially were built into the five-day program.

A social worker and a psychologist from the Children's were at Le Bel Agneau; so was a child psychiatrist. Families contributed what they could to the cost of the program, which began last summer as a pilot project - to a maximum of $600; the rest of the cost was underwritten by the Montreal Children's Hospital Foundation and by fundraising efforts on the part of students at McGill's faculty of management.

For more on Le Bel Agneau, visit www.lebelagneau.com

 

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