School-based social skills training for young people with autism spectrum disorders

ABSTRACT

Background: The Secret Agent Society (SAS) Program, an intervention to enhance social–emotional skills, was provided by schools for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The program was assessed to determine if it improved social skills at school and home, and whether improvements were maintained.

Methods: Eighty-four students participated. Key outcomes were parent and teacher ratings of emotion regulation, social skills, and direct child social problem-solving measures. The standard school curriculum served as the control condition. Phase 1 was a two-group waitlist-control comparison of SAS versus the standard curriculum. Phase 2 was a follow up of all participants before and after the intervention and at 12-months post-intervention.

Results: Parent and child measures improved after the intervention but not in the waitlist condition. Improvements in parent, child, and teacher measures were apparent at 12 months.

Conclusions: The SAS Program warrants further research as a potential program for schools that serve children with ASD.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism spectrum disorder
• social skills training
• school

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the contributions of participating children, parents and Aspect school staff. R. Beaumont was affiliated with the School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia at the time of the research. D. Costley was affiliated with Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect), Sydney, Australia at the time of the research.

Disclosure statement

Dr Renae Beaumont is the author of the Secret Agent Society Program and receives royalties on all program materials sold.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Australian Research Council under ARC Linkage Grant LP100100052 and a contribution from Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect).