Social communication group

Our social communication group helps children who struggle to interact with others in an appropriate manner to develop the skills needed to behave appropriately in social situations. The group aims to increase and improve children’s social skills. Our speech and language therapists deliver therapy in small groups using exciting and engaging activities that are tailored to the child’s age and development stage.

Our speech and language therapists will first identify which areas of social communication need improvement, before implementing a therapy program to support this. Through increasing a child’s understanding and recognition of body language, a child can learn to adjust their response to match the emotions of the other person. Through learning about conversational breakdown and repair a child can develop better conversational skills.

Our speech and language therapists aim for all children attending our social communication group to improve their social communication skill. Our aims include:

• To improve children’s ability to recognise and respond appropriately to verbal and non-verbal communication, improve friendships and turn taking/sharing and time.
• To improve social communication skills of children in order to develop better conversational skills and interactional skills.
• To improve communicative behavior and general behavior in social settings through learning and recognising appropriate and inappropriate behavior in different settings.

This will be achieved in an enjoyable and engaging setting with a range of activities suitable for the children’s age. Activities will be carried out in a small group setting of 4 children across a 1 hour therapy session.

This group is suitable for children who have difficulty with any of the following difficulties:

• Children who struggle to communicate appropriately with others.
• Children who don’t understand social rules that are applied in different situations.
• Children who struggle adjust their communication to match the person they are talking to.
• Children who have difficulty making friendships.
• Children who don’t recognize body language and emotions in others.
• Children who don’t speak to other peers or adults and plays alone.
• Children who difficulty with conversation skills e.g. changing topic, taking turns, recognizing when people don’t understand.
• Children who have a literal understanding of language.

Children attending the group can be of any age from pre-school and school aged, but children within a group should ideally not be more than a year apart.

Our social communication group will include a mixture of adult led activities and games used to increase social communication and interaction skills. Some games will also help to increase friendship development. Groups will also include activities where the child can role play appropriate behavior and communication in different social settings, this will help implement these new skills in real life situations, as the child had already had the opportunity to practice in a safe environment. Groups will be led by a qualified speech and language therapist, and implemented over a 6 week period. Each child attending the social communication group will receive a full individual report and a certificate on completion of the group.

Our social communication group provides the opportunity for children to develop their skills in a safe and supporting environment. Benefits of our social communication group include:

• Increase in social communication and interaction.
• Improved understanding of social rules.
• Increased ability to recognise verbal and nonverbal behavior in others.
• Improved conversational skills such as topic maintenance and turn taking.
• Increased ability to recognise and demonstrate appropriate communicative behavior in various settings.
• Increased understanding of jokes, idioms and sarcasm (older children).
• Increased self esteem.

Our speech and language therapists run social communication groups throughout the year. Children will leave the group with better social communication and interaction skills, making it easier for them to understand the communicative environments around them.

If you are interested in finding out more information about our social communication group, please email office@sltforkids.co.uk or call us on 0330 088 2298.