Here are a few of my top tips for making your intervention
work..
I like to put any intervention into the following four-step plan before I start
my group or one-to-one sessions. This will help you to work out how best to
work with someone on their social skills difficulties.
Step 1: The behaviour … what is it?
Make sure that you choose the right behaviour or skill to
work on first. So, having assessed the person, you need to consider the
hierarchy and the complexity of the skill you want to work on with them. Ask
yourself: are you setting up the person to succeed? Is the behaviour too
complex?
Now consider whether the behaviour has a function or a reason. Maybe the person
is behaving in this way because of an underlying problem that has not been
addressed, eg a sensory need. Or they may be getting something out of the behaviour:
for example, people leave them alone and they like this.
Finally, try to really describe what the person is doing –
the more detailed you can describe the behaviour, the more likely you are to be
able to help the person understand what they are doing wrong. You may need to
add how it might make other people feel or what they may think to give them
insight, although I would do this jointly with the person.
Step 2: The rules … what are they?
We need to help people to understand what they should be
doing instead – what are the rules?
What should be happening? So many adults I have worked with
have asked me why they were never taught the rules as a child. Of course,
before we can do that, we do need to know them ourselves, so that is where I
hope the
Talkabout resources will help you out!
Step 3: The motivation … what is it?
Every person you work with will need to be motivated at some
level to come to your group, change their behaviour, and become more socially
skilled. Often the key to success is to work out what the motivation is going
to be for the person to want to change.
We cannot assume that all people are motivated by ‘being
friendly’ or ‘friendly behaviour’ or ‘people will like me’ or ‘mum will be
pleased’. It may be better to reward them with something: for example, an
activity, a smiley-face chart or just saying ‘This is the polite thing to do’
or ‘This is the grown-up thing to do’. If we don’t consider the motivation, the
intervention may fail.
Step 4: The strategy … which one is best?
There are many different ways of helping people to improve
their social skills and usually the best intervention is the one that includes
a number of them. There are eight main ways in which we can help someone.
1 The environment – in the school or
at home. It is essential that the environment backs up what is being taught as
much as possible. Think about getting all of the teaching staff on board with
what you are working on. Making sure that everyone is encouraging and discouraging
in the same way can go a long way to helping someone transfer those skills out
of a group and into their everyday life. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t work with
someone if I can’t get the environment to back us up, but it may explain a
slower progress. You may see people beginning to get the behaviour in certain
situations but not all of them. This is OK. It shows you that the person has
the ability to get it right when the environment is conducive.
2 Talk it through with them or use comic strip
conversations. With many skills and behaviours, it is very helpful to talk it
through with the person or to draw it using stick figures and speech bubbles.
You will gain an insight into how they may describe what is happening and why
it happens, which will help with your intervention.
3 Social storyTM. Carol Gray developed this approach in the
early 1990s and I often use stories to help teach social skills. A social story
gives someone insight into their difficulties
and helps them to know what they can do instead. It also contains perspective
sentences about what other people may be feeling or thinking which can be very
useful for people with ASD.
4 A visual cue or schedule. It is important to remember that
many people are helped by working visually, so the worksheets and activities in
this book will help, but people may also be helped by a prompt card or a poster
displayed in the classroom. At our Day Service, ‘Speaking Space’, in the UK, we use a lot of ‘now and next’
symbolised strips which can work well to cue people in to what is expected of
them in certain situations.
5 A reward system. Rewards can help if the motivation is
very tangible: for example, stickers to get a financial reward or do an
activity, or a certificate of achievement. Other rewards can include a special
time with someone to talk about something specific – for example, 20 minutes at
the end of the day to talk to their mum about dinosaurs. Any reward needs to work
for the person, so you need to refer to their motivation.
6 Use of other media. Using DVDs and clips of cartoons or television
programmes, or even video clips of you modelling behaviour, can really help to
teach social skills. Many people find visual methods of learning much easier
and showing a video will usually motivate most people. I often use this method
in groups as well as in one-to-one sessions. The Talkabout DVD includes video
clips of actors modelling inappropriate and appropriate behaviours for all of
the key skills covered in Talkabout (Kelly, 2006).
7 Role play and modelling. In this book I often suggest
using role play and modelling to help teach skills. Modelling is when the
facilitators model a behaviour, both inappropriate and appropriate, and role
play is when the group members practise the behaviour themselves.
Here are a few important points to remember when modelling:
• Keep it short and simple.
• Model one behaviour at a time.
• Start with bad behaviour and end with good.
• Never use the group members to help you model behaviours.
• Keep the situation as ‘real’ as possible – it is better to
model a normal conversation between two group facilitators than to pretend that
one is a child, shopkeeper or teacher.
• Ask the group what they thought was bad about the
behaviour. What should have happened?
Here are a few important points to remember when role
playing:
• The group members are asked to act a scenario or to
practise a skill.
• It is a stressful experience for some people.
• Try a ‘getting into role’ exercise such as the magic
carpet or twisting into a role like ‘Superman’.
• Remember to de-role, especially if the group members have
played the part of someone else.
• Consider using puppets.
8 Social skills group. This is my favourite way to teach social
skills and the Talkabout programme should give you all the resources you need
to run a successful social skills group.
The advantages of group work over one-to-one work are as
follows.
• It is a more natural and comfortable environment in which
to learn.
• We learn from each other.
• It is easier to problem solve, play games and to set up
role plays.
• It gives the opportunity to try out new skills in a safe
environment.
• There is an opportunity to transfer skills to other staff,
improving the chance of carry-over into the environment.
Alex Kelly
Speechmark author of TALKABOUT
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