Social Skills Intervention

Are you concerned about their child’s social emotional development and ability to play and interact with other children? You know that your child has wonderful qualities but their social skills are poor. Children become frustrated because they desperately want to have friends and don’t know how to establish and maintain relationships with peers. Simple exposure to social situations is not enough for some children to learn these skills; they need to be explicitly taught.

Typical concerns related to social skills development include difficulty in reciprocity, initiating and maintaining interactions, maintaining eye gaze, sharing joy, empathy and reading social cues of others. This makes it difficult to develop and maintain meaningful and fulfilling personal relationships. This is a lack of ability not a lack of social interest.

This program addresses the needs of children ages 3 through 16 who need one-to-one or small group support. Services may be provided at home, in the community, at the Step by Step EDU-Play Center or any combination of locations depending on the focus of the intervention. Services are offered year-round, in 6 month cycles.

Groups are 1.5 hour sessions.

Step By Step EDU-Play Program process:

Services focus on development of the child’s skills in engaging with others and accepting others in reciprocal interactions and “Play”:

• Initiating appropriate interactions with others
• Self Regulation
• Conflict Resolution
• Two way Communication
• Self esteem
• Development of advanced play skill
• Transition to settings where one-to-one support is reduced and the child is successful in all settings.
• Parents must participate and are encouraged to learn and practice techniques and tools to help their child in successful interactions.
• Parent involvement may be met via coaching, video review, view on the monitor and review with the facilitator, parent meetings and conferences.

Tools and strategies may include peer mentors, activities on reading social cues (thoughts and feelings), facilitating reciprocal interactions, use of social stories, Role play or rehearsal, video or tape recording, art, music and drama. An assessment of communication skills is necessary to determine the use of multi-modal communication tools such as Picture Exchange Communication, visual schedules, and sign language or augmentative communication (computers and switches); Sensory strategies for self-regulation are also used to assist with anxiety and organizational skills.