Social groups

[Guest guest]

Glenkirk Next Generation Services, located in the Northbrook area has a Thursday evening community based program from 4 pm-7 pm and an every other Saturday evening community based program from 5 pm-8 pm.

If you would like further information call at 847/291-7522.

There are some additional opportunities at Next Generation, as well.

Ellen

Ellen Garber Bronfeldegskb@...

social groups

My daughter is 24 and could use some friends. Does anyone know ofsocial groups that have young adult women as well as men? (We're onthe north side of Chicago.)Thanks,Ellen

[Guest guest]

I just realized we have gotten social skill groups for my ds over the years without having to pay for it. So I thought I would add this to the discussion if anyone might find it useful.

We have always had our ds in social skill groups as part of his school ESY. Remember, ESY is not only just about losing skills over the summer and it is often not that hard to advocate for this. Our local ST that we use always had a summer group for kids with AS/HFA. And even if the school wouldn't have paid, it was really not expensive - not like the $85 a session that someone else had mentioned. So you may have to search around, ask the ST's in your area about groups over the summer. A few times, she extended the groups through the school year as well. I know for instance, that our Easter Seals has a social group over the summer too. I can't remember if it was that expensive or not. We just always had the school paying. Now that my ds is e-schooling, they run his IEP all year long meaning I don't have to beg for ESY each year. He gets ST all summer as part of his regular school program. This is NICE! Instead of 1-1 ST, we have put him in social groups with the ST. This past summer, though, there were not enough kids his age to form a group.

Another thing we did was ask the school to have a social skill group. Learning social skills is a definite part of the disability and if you have a school staff that wants to work with you or are open to ideas, you can get this put together. In our case, the school counselor led the group. They had put it together for my ds specifically but they got other kids who needed it as well. And they brought in volunteer kids who did not need it to help with the activities and provide peer models. It was once a week during lunch and recess. They followed a specific curriculum as well.

My only problem with the school doing the lessons was they were not enough at once a week and they did not provide any generalization support, which my ds needed. Some kids may not need as much, though. But I would ask for some form of generalization support to see that it is carrying over to real life. I felt that the volunteer NT peers could have volunteered outside of the small group to include my ds once in a while.

Roxanna

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." E. Burke