Autism Social Communication Program

Individuals with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulty with understanding the social world and developing social skills.

Deficits in social skills in children and adolescents with ASD can show difficulty in turn taking during play and conversation, often with narrow topics of interest, perspective taking together with difficulty interpreting social cues essential for making friendships and social interactions.

In the long term, social differences become more apparent and individuals may become more aware of the social challenges that inhibit them from making and keeping these friendships.

This can result in depression and anxiety as well as increased feelings of loneliness and a failure to make friendships (Laugeson et al., 2014; Mendelson et al., 2016).

Introducing PEERS

Maintaining meaningful friendships

The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS) is an evidence based social skills curriculum that aims to teach individuals how to make and maintain meaningful friendships and understand social rules within a group setting.

Learning social skills

The use of PEERS had been widely demonstrated as effective in teaching ecologically valid social skills to preschool children, adolescents and adults with ASD.

It has also applicable for individuals with ADHD, anxiety and social emotional difficulties.

Within a proven process

PEERs has been proven to be effective

• It is evidence based.
• Parents or care givers are trained as a social coach* weekly on how to help those attending the social group to develop and maintain friendships.
• The addition of the social coach allows for greater generalisation of skills to the natural environment.
• Social coaches provide assistance with finding a source of friends and the completion of weekly assigned homework.
• Skills are taught as social rules and broken down into simple steps.
• Participants are provided with the opportunity to observe role models and rehearse skills with feedback.

* The social coach is a parent, care giver, sibling or mentor who is able to attend weekly training sessions and help implement the content of the lessons.

The PEERS program

Structure

The PEERS curriculum runs for 12 to 16 weeks. Sessions are taught weekly for 90 minutes, with social coach training occurring simultaneously.

Sessions are in person and will be held in various London venues to be confirmed. Please contact us for more information.

Requirements

Participant and social coach requirements:

• To have social skill deficits in making and maintain friendships.
• To be interested in attending the group weekly for the duration of the program (both participants and social coaches).
• To complete weekly homework in order to continue in the program.
• Be able to keep up with sessions, with new skills taught each week.

Groups and sessions

We are currently providing the following PEERS programs:

• PEERS for preschool children (Parents only with children aged 4 to 6)
• Preschool children social skills group and PEERS for preschool parent group (age 4 to 6)
• PEERS for children group (10 to 12)
• PEERS for teenagers group (13 to 17)
• PEERS for young adults group (18 to 30)
• 1:1 PEERS therapy sessions.