All children can be challenging to some extent, but some are more challenging than others. Young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties can be extremely tough for professionals to engage, support and teach. Such disengagement is typically conveyed by refusing to complete tasks, craving attention, avoiding challenges, displaying loud or quiet defiance to learning, creating chaos and physically displaying utter indifference. These young people seem to do all they can to avoid behaving or learning. The impact of this that many of these young people are in danger of school exclusion and at serious risk of ending up in the criminal justice system and/or requiring long term mental health support.

The overall impact of this is disruption create major societal and economic costs on their peers, their families and often the overall functioning and culture of the organisations that are trying to assist and support them. Commonly these young people present amongst a cluster of overlapping and co-existing conditions; those who can’t learn – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), those who won’t learn – Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and those that simply don’t care if they learn or not – Conduct Disorder (CD). The common behaviour shared by them all is that many of these children display a ‘counter – will’ in relation to authority, especially when frustrated or stressed. They may be extremely inflexible or explosive in these situations and the more pressure which is applied to make them conform the greater the opposition.