What We Offer

Social Interaction Skills

• Making and maintaining friendships
• Conversational skills
• Self-Awareness
• Reading the body language and emotions of others
• Monitoring their behaviour and language according to the situation they are in
• Being a good sport e.g. coping when they lose
• Working with others in a group
• Individual self-regulation e.g. keeping calm and reacting in ways that are appropriate and at the correct intensity for the situation

Sensory Processing

This considers how the brain receives information from the senses, how it organises this information, and how it responds. Socially Speaking supports sensory processing and regulation for those who struggle with:

• Sitting/standing still or too close, walking over objects and tending to be clumsy
• Touching everything in sight
• Finding unexpected or loud noises difficult
• Chewing things
• Being over sensitive to touch
• Organising themselves
• Thinking before acting
• Getting easily distracted

Executive Functioning

Executive function is like the CEO of the brain. People use it to perform activities such as planning, organising, problem solving, paying attention, and time management.

Executive function supports students who struggle with:

• Working memory (being able to listen and hold information in their head and manipulate that information)
• Time management
• Starting, maintaining and completing tasks
• Prioritisation
• Organisation
• Paying attention
• Keeping track of more than one thing at a time

Oral Language

Speech and language therapy can help students who struggle with:

• Developing vocabulary i.e. the ability to use language to categorise, describe, define, compare and contrast
• Developing comprehension of oral language
• Giving/following instructions
• Developing listening and attention skills
• Targeting of specific articulation skills

Social Thinking

Our ability to develop social skills encompasses far more than our ability to participate in conversations and to play alongside others. Social thinking drives our social interactions, and teaches us how to figure out what other people may be thinking and feeling. When we use social thinking, we use the expected behaviour for a situation – which then makes others around us feel comfortable.

The idea is that we need to learn social “thinking” before we can use social “skills.” The focus on thinking can build skills to lead to better social interactions.

Socially Speaking teaches children and young people to observe and think about their own and others’ thoughts and feelings. They also learn the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

Alison Schroeder and Georgina Hemmings have undergone training in Social Thinking in Australia run by Michelle Garcia Winner (Founder and CEO of Social Thinking). Socially Speaking has a wide range of up to date Social Thinking Resources.

Learn more at www.socialthinking.com

The Alert Programme

The Zones of Regulation is a framework designed to develop skills in self-regulation, improving emotional control, sensory regulation and the ability to exercise executive functioning skills.

The Zones of Regulation uses four colours (or ‘zones’) to help children to develop initially an awareness of different states of alertness and emotions and to develop an ability to visually and verbally self-identify which zone they are in.

Socially Speaking therapists work closely with children and their families to learn about their own regulation systems and to find tools and supports to manage their different states of alertness and emotions.

Alison Schroeder has undergone training by Leigh M Kuypers (author) in Australia in the Zones of Regulation and Socially Speaking has a wide range of up to date Zones of Regulation resources.

Learn more at http://www.zonesofregulation.com

Lego® Therapy

Lego® Therapy is an evidence-based treatment designed to increase the social competencies of individuals on the Autism Spectrum. The intervention is now widely used by therapists and support workers around the world to support children and young people with social learning challenges to think and work co-operatively together. Although on the surface the goal of the sessions appears to be to build a Lego® project as a team, the underlying goals are to facilitate and increase social communication between group members.

Socially Speaking incorporates Lego therapy into our Kids Club and Zone after school social groups. This supports group members developing social interaction skills in a fun way as well as support emotional regulation skills.