What We Offer

Children and youth referred to BBS may be fighting, breaking rules, having difficulties in friendships, falling behind academically or having problems negotiating adult expectations. Problems are serious enough to be noticed at home, at school, with peers or in the community.

Individual Treatment

We offer brief, goal-focused individual therapy for children, adolescents and families to help them learn new ways to deal with problems related to complex disruptive behaviour.

Group Treatment

The Incredible Years Parenting Program is a 15-week parent training group. It is offered to parents with children ages 6 to 12 who display non-compliant, disruptive and aggressive behaviour. Through the program parents work with trained facilitators to promote positive behaviour in their children, reduce their parental stress, improve their relationship with their child, and lessen their child’s disruptive behaviour. The program is offered both in the daytime, and in the evening when the parents’ children are enrolled in the Dinosaur Social Skills Program.

The Dinosaur Social Skills Program is a 15-week social skills training group for children, ages 6 to 8, who demonstrate challenging behaviours including non-compliance to adult requests, disruptive/aggressive behavior and social behavior difficulties. The program teaches children positive ways to communicate, solve problems, deal with anger, build self-esteem and develop social skills. It is offered in the evening when the children’s parents are enrolled in the Incredible Years Parenting Program.

Both programs use videos, exercises, homework, group discussion and role-plays.

The Addressing Behaviour and Treatment Effectiveness Project (ABATE) is a treatment study to evaluate the effectiveness of individualized child and family treatment compared to group-based parent and child treatment for children aged 9 – 12 with disruptive/aggressive behaviour (i.e., Coping Power). Parents and children who are a good fit for the project are invited to participate in assessment and 15 weeks of either treatment. Each form of treatment is geared towards developing children’s skills with managing their anger, building more prosocial behaviours and teaching problem-solving and social skills. The parenting component helps parents develop more effective skills to manage their child’s behaviour, promote better communication and positive behavioural development. Parent and child groups are offered concurrently in the evening.

Day Treatment

The CATCH Classroom is a 10-month, day treatment classroom, for children, ages 6 to 8 with clinically significant emotional, behavioural and learning complexities across settings. It serves eight children per academic year. Individualised treatment plans are developed for children and families. These incorporate therapeutic work within the classroom and regularly scheduled child and family work. Each component is essential in providing effective treatment.

The CATCH Classroom is a partnership with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and is housed on-site at CAMH, in the Child, Youth and Family Program. It offers academic and therapeutic programming. The academic programming follows the guidelines and curriculum set by the Ontario Ministry of Education.