​Bullying, mental health disorders, violence, serious defiance, and aggressiveness are among the challenging behaviors that officials at Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCCs) are faced with on a daily basis.
To tackle that, the Gauteng Department of Social Development’s Psychological Services has embarked on a nine-day behavior modification training at the Southern Sun Hotel.

This aims to implement behavior modification as a strategy to shape the behaviors of children and youth by minimizing disruptive and undesirable behaviors while increasing positive and desirable behaviors among the kids in the institutions.

The training sessions engaged with the Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) officials about the challenges they face in CYCCs and displayed the level of knowledge they possess when it comes to dealing with children admitted to these institutions.

The sessions are designed to equip MDTs with the skills for interacting with children who show negative behaviors and strategies for modifying positive or desirable behaviors.

These children may display undesirable behaviors due to the background and environment they come from, which are often characterized by violence, neglect, and substance abuse. As such, the CYCCs deal with children that display extremely complex and challenging behaviors, who need skills as well as techniques to help shape their behaviors and help them become good citizens who contribute positively to society.

The programme aims to ensure that the MDTs are equipped with the knowledge and skills to participate together in managing and contributing positively to shaping the children's behaviors. The MDTs play a very crucial role in the CYCC; these are representatives from care sections who possess knowledge about service users, psychiatrists, psychologists, or mental health professionals; Occupational therapists; case managers; and Social Workers responsible for the service users.

Thembisile Sibanyoni, a Child and Youth Care Worker from Emmasdal CYCC, came into the training sessions with the expectation of being taught new techniques and tools for interacting with the children and she left training with the knowledge of reinforcing positive behavior and parenting styles.

Behavior modification is concerned with analyzing and changing human behavior.