Masonic donation adds another dimension to care

The Masonic Grand Lodge, Auckland has provided funding for Child Mental Health Services to introduce The Incredible Years programme to reduce challenging behaviours in children aged three to eight years, and increase their social and self-control skills. With the use of puppets, intervention manuals and DVDs trained therapists promote children’s social competence, emotional regulation and problem solving skills and reduce their behaviour problems.

Evidence shows that the programmes have turned around the behaviours of up to 80 percent of the children. If left unchecked these behaviours would mean those children are at greater risk in adulthood of unemployment, mental health problems, substance abuse, early pregnancy/early fatherhood, criminal offending, multiple arrests and imprisonment, higher rates of domestic violence and shortened life expectancy.

The Incredible Years programme gives strategies to manage behaviours such as aggressiveness, ongoing tantrums, and acting out behaviour such as swearing, whining, yelling, hitting and kicking, answering back, and refusing to follow rules. It is estimated that around five percent of children in New Zealand have severe behaviour difficulties (are on what is clinically called an ‘anti-social pathway’). Through using a range of strategies, health services help children regulate their emotions and improve their social skills so that they can get along better with peers and adults, and do better academically and have a more enjoyable family life.