All staffers attended a professional ... - Chapel Haven



Training workshop for all Chapel Haven staff focuses on “socially competent” behavior

[pic]All staffers attended a professional development day at Chapel Haven on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010, where Dr. Teresa Bolick, PhD, shared tips and strategies on how to help adults on the spectrum learn “competent” behavior for a variety of settings.

Dr. Bolick is a licensed psychologist with a special interest in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and Asperger Syndrome. Click here – – to learn more about The Bolick House and Dr. Bolick’s work.

She presented a developmental framework, the House of Human Development, to help Chapel Haven staff understand the obstacles to socially competent behavior. She then shared practical and efficient strategies that enhance socially competent behavior at school, at home, and in the community. Along the way, Dr. Bolick described “social capital” and how it can be utilized to ensure that the person with an autism spectrum disorder is given “the benefit of the doubt” while learning socially competent behavior.

“Young adults with developmental challenges often struggle to demonstrate their competence in the real world,” said Bolick. “Skills that are mastered in the instructional setting may not hold up in the face of social and job demands. Behavior that is appropriate in a supervised setting may become problematic when structure and support are decreased. Independent initiative and problem solving disappear in unfamiliar or complex situations. This workshop presented a framework in which to understand challenging behavior and build independent social/emotional/behavioral competence.”

She also noted that, “children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome (AS) are often quite interested in the social world. Many of them have had enough social skills intervention to know the written and unwritten strategies of social behavior. Yet they remain all too inefficient in implementing these in the fast-paced real world. As a result, they may appear socially awkward and/or uninterested. Their social challenges can make them more vulnerable to anxiety and sadness regarding not fitting in with their peers.”

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