Case Study: Autism Impacting Social Relationships
In the interest of safeguarding, the child has been referred to as ‘Brodie’ throughout the case study.
Renata has been working with Brodie on his difficulties communicating with others and being understood by others following his Autism diagnosis. He has been receiving intervention with Chatterbug since September 2021. We have been working within Brodie’s secondary school setting since December 2019.
Background
Brodie has been struggling with his ability to communicate with others and how well he is understood by others. In addition, due to his limited ability to express himself, he is often emotionally dysregulated. Both of these factors are having an impact on his mental health, due to social isolation, and his academic progress, due to his emotional dysregulation.
Brodie is currently in KS3 and, will soon be entering KS4 and preparing for his GCSEs. This is why it is absolutely essential he receives intervention, as this will allow him to better access his learning within the classroom.
How did we help Brodie?
To support Brodie’s social communication skills, Renata paired him with another student and attended a social skills group. This allows him to learn the skills and practice with other children that struggle with their social communication skills.
Within the group, they have set out clear rules and expectations for their conversations. This allows Brodie to better understand applying traditional conversation rules to a more natural/functional environment.
Renata, Brodie and the other students use some activities found in Talk About Teenagers that relate to conversation skills to support the structure of their sessions.
It’s essential when providing the intervention that it is always relevant to the child receiving therapy. For this reason, our therapists will engage them with a topic they are interested in. As our therapist was working with this group on topic changes, she allowed Brodie and the other student to choose the topics. This meant they got to choose topics they were interested in, improving their engagement with the intervention!
What is Brodie’s progress to date?
As part of his intervention, Brodie has been attending a social skills group to support the development of his conversational skills. This has allowed him to appropriately change topics, stay on topic when necessary and take conversational turns. Instead, he now actively tries to include others in conversation by asking for their input! He can now even recognise when a topic is changed abruptly and the impact this has on a conversation.
These positive changes can then help him build social relationships through conversation and will find school a less isolating and lonely place. As result, he will have a much more positive schooling career!
Moving forward, Renata aims to focus on Brodie’s emotional regulation abilities. This will help to better prepare him for classroom learning and improve his ability to engage with lesson plans.
What does Brodie have to say about his therapy?
Now that Brodie can hold a meaningful conversation, he has been able to develop closer relationships with his previously established friends!
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