As a result of these experiences, we are convinced that a valuable diagnostic tool has been overlooked in child psychiatry. We decided to set up an acute inpatient service for pre-adolescent, emotionally disturbed children, based on the notion that a short period of carefully structured separation at the time of a crisis may be a valuable diagnostic tool in permitting a more intensive and extensive evaluation of intrinsic problems in child and family. It should be emphasized that this notion does not negate the general principles of support for children to live in warm family relationships rather than apart from them. However, this notion does allow for exceptions to the rule; all children are not best off in their own families; structured and realistic separations are not inevitably traumatic and the door is open to the temporary separation of children with hospital placement as a relieving and elective diagnostic tool rather than inevitably as a last resort.Abstract Teaser