Social Skills Groups for Children and Adolescents with Asperger's Syndrome: A Step-by-Step Program

Social Skills Groups for Children and Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome is an empirically-grounded, ready-to-use curriculum for clinicians, teachers and other professionals wishing to lead social skills groups for children and adolescents with AS. It provides an introduction to AS and issues surrounding social skills, including diagnostic and assessment issues, the importance of good social skills, and treatment approaches. At the heart of the resource is a practical, user-friendly, fully photocopiable program, consisting of 10 core sessions and 13 supplementary sessions, which covers topics such as greetings, emotions, facial expressions, conversational skills and more. Each session contains an outline of the aims, the empirical basis of the skill being taught, step-by-step instructions for group leaders, and parent and teacher handouts. A comprehensive and practical social skills group program, this will be an invaluable and unique resource for clinicians, teachers, parents and professionals working with children and adolescents with AS social skills Kim Kiker Painter, PhD, specializes in working with children, adolescents, and families. She has extensive professional experience of assessing and treating individuals with autism spectrum disorders, and has a brother with autism who has greatly influenced her interest in this area. She is currently continuing her clinical work with children and adolescents at Silber Solutions, P.A.

Table of Contents:
Part I: Asperger Syndrome and Social Skills. Chapter 1. Overview of AS. Chapter 2. Diagnostic and Assessment Issues. Chapter 3. The Importance of Social Skills. Chapter 4. Treatment Approaches. Chapter 5. Introduction to the Model Program. Chapter 6. `Summing Up'. Part II: The Program. Chapter 7. The Model Program. Session 1: Greeting and Getting to Know You. Session 2: Identifying Emotions. Session 3: Identifying Facial Expressions. Session 4: Continuum of Emotions. Session 5: Tone of Voice. Session 6: Initiating Conversations. Session 7: Maintaining Conversations - Basic Conversational Skills. Session 8: Maintaining Conversations - Responding to the Emotions of Others. Session 9: Conversational Skills - Phone Skills. Session 10: Manners and Dinner Outing. Chapter 8.Supplemental Sessions. Part III: Further Reading. Appendix: Theoretical Background to this Resource. References. Subject index. Author index.

About the Author :
Kim Kiker Painter, PhD, specializes in working with children, adolescents, and families. She has extensive professional experience of assessing and treating individuals with autism spectrum disorders, and has a brother with autism who has greatly influenced her interest in this area. She is currently continuing her clinical work with children and adolescents at Silber Solutions, P.A.

Review :
This book goes some way to address this challenge by outlining a ready-to-use Model Program of ten 60-minute structured sessions, plus13 supplemental sessions based on heavily researched literature. It is written in a user-friendly format, provides instruction and explanation for the group leader, plus handouts for both parents and teachers to encourage further generalisation of taught skills. The book has been designed for use by teachers and clinicians (such as speech and language therapists, psychologists.) It provides a brief overview of Asperger syndrome, discusses the social skills of deficit in AS and outlines the key components of a social skills group. As a guide for setting up a social skills group, the book works well. It highlights the key information necessary. The core and supplemental activities are well researched and the format is user-friendly. I would recommend this book particularly to practitioners in a non-specialist setting who are aiming to set up a social skills group for students with AS. This is for clinicians, teachers, parents and other professionals who want to improve the social skills of children and young people with Asperger syndrome. It provides an introduction to Asperger syndrome and teaching social skills, as well as treatment approaches. There is a wide range of lesson plans, which focus on greetings, facial expressions and conversational skills.