Orphans and Vulnerable Children - CRIN

Helping Children to Change Behaviour

In this activity, you will:

 Discuss with the group how home visitors can help children with behaviour change

Facilitator’s notes:

The CCC and home visitors can play a useful role in helping young people to change their behaviour.

The following suggestions may be useful:

 Affirm and reinforce acceptable or positive behaviour in children.

 Point out unacceptable behaviour without labelling the child. Remember to separate the

behaviour from the child. For example, say that you don’t like lies, rather than telling the child

that they are a liar.

 It helps to give reasons why a child’s behaviour is unacceptable. Get the child to picture how

he or she will feel if they change their behaviour and how it will affect others.

 Be realistic in helping young people to assess the ‘costs’ of behaviour change. Let the

individual tell you the cost for himself or herself. Help the young person see how the benefits

outweigh the costs.

 Let young people identify the time or circumstances when behaviour change will be most

difficult. Help the child to plan how to handle these circumstances.

 Young people will need support and mentoring for behaviour change. Home visitors will

need to act as role models to them.

For this activity you will need:

 Flipchart and markers

 Extra sheets of blank paper

To facilitate this activity:

1 Divide participants into small groups and assign each group a behaviour pattern that needs to be

changed. Possible examples: a youth is having unprotected sex with a peer, a girl is having sex with

an older man who is paying her school fees, a child is drinking alcohol, a child is skipping school.

Ask each group to discuss how they would go about trying to change this risky behaviour pattern.

What kind of things would they say to the child? How would they follow up? How would they

respond if the negative behaviour continues?

2 Ask each group to present their plans for behaviour change in plenary. Give participants the

opportunity to discuss their plan and to make suggestions. After each group has made their

presentation, supplement their ideas with the suggestions in the facilitator’s notes. Ask the

participants how they might go about applying these ideas to the children they may visit.

3 Hand out sheets of blank paper and get the participants to write down the examples of how

a home visitor can help a child, based on the inputs that have been made. These pages

will form part of their home visitor’s handbook.

30 minutes

Activity 4

(^274) Unit 2, Module 4 Guide to Mobilising and Strengthening Community-Led Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children