This article originally appeared in START Connecting in October 2018. 

We all need social skills to get along with others, negotiate the school years, make friends, and relate to others at our job. For individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), understanding social behavior and using social skills is often a challenge, making it difficult to navigate many social settings. However, through proven intervention strategies such as explicit instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and reinforcement, social skills can be taught from a foundational level to higher level skills.   

The Program for Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) is a manualized, group-based social skills curriculum developed at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. PEERS® is designed to help participants with ASD, ADHD, anxiety, depression, and other social challenges make and keep friends. The first adolescent program was developed in 2005. Since that time, preschool, young adult, and school-based social skills training curriculums have been developed (at this time there is a not a specific curriculum available for school-aged children). PEERS® training and certification is offered to parents, caregivers, educators, and professionals for use with the population they serve. Baseline and post-data are part of all curricula to assess learning outcomes.

Preschool-age curriculum focus:

• listening and following directions
• play skills such as turn taking, being flexible, asking friends to play, joining a game
• asking for help
• body boundaries and volume. 

Adolescents and adult curriculum focus:

• finding common interests
• trading information and sharing the conversation
• initiating, maintaining, and ending conversations
• handling teasing and bullying
• using humor
• dating

In the PEERS® model, preschool or adolescent children participate in group sessions with peers where skills are taught, modeled, and practiced. During that time, parents attend separate sessions and learn about the lessons and how to coach their child to use the new skills. Similarly, adults participating in group sessions are required to bring a social coach, such as a parent or peer who can learn the curriculum. Having a social coach aids in maintaining and generalizing learned skills outside of the training. As one of the few evidence-based social skills curricula for adolescents, PEERS® has research demonstrating durability over time. For example, teens gain and maintain friendships and have an increased number of get-togethers. 

Social skills training is a way to advance functional interpersonal skills that can be helpful in developing and maintaining friendships, communications with co-workers, and other relationships. There are a number of PEERS® certified trainers in Michigan who have been credentialed in one or more of the programs. Many of the programs have similar features with specific differences related to the age or setting. You can find out more about the UCLA PEERS®  Social Skills programs on their website.  

Written by: Stacie Rulison, M.Ed, BCBA 

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