Writing and Developing Social Stories Ed. 2

Practical Interventions in Autism

Caroline Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351697781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This practical resource provides an introduction to the theory and practice of writing social stories. In addition, there are examples of successful stories to use as guides, as well as information and photocopiable (and downloadable) resources for delivering training on the use of social stories. Based on detailed work carried out in homes, schools and pre-schools, this book offers practical support to anyone meeting the needs of a child or young adult with an autistic spectrum disorder, and with staff supporting adults with autism. Social stories are short stories intended for children and adults with autism to help them understand their social world and behave appropriately within it. The stories: provide clear, concise and accurate information about what is happening in a specific situation, outlining both why it is happening and what a typical response might be; are written by those directly supporting children or adults with autism and only successful stories are included in the book; are infinitely flexible and adaptable to an individual child in an individual social situation. FEATURES: This 2nd edition has been thoroughly revised and updated throughout. It also now contains: brand new stories including examples for use by parents at home; brand new section on mental health; and, additional stories for use with adults with autism.

Chapter 1
Introduction

This book is about writing and developing social stories. It is about maintaining a focus on the needs of young people and adults with autism so that they feel safe, are happy and healthy, learn new, useful and exciting things, have fun, are part of a support network, grow in independence, developing into kind and caring adults. Social stories have a role to play in all these areas.

Throughout this work on social stories, it is important that readers bear in mind that ‘one size does not fit all’ and that each story is unique, written for a specific person. Underpinning this uniqueness is the knowledge that every social story is guided by clear ethical aims. Social stories focus on the short-term needs and the long-term good of the person for whom they are written.

The acronym CARES (Smith, 2014) highlights the importance of pursuing aims which enhance the individual’s

• choice and control: the making of meaningful choices about their day, their life
• access and opportunity: increasing access to new areas of activity
• relationships: the development of mutually supportive relationships
• emotional well-being: the recognition, understanding and self-management of feelings
• skills and competencies: opportunities to learn new and useful skills.

Developing the social understanding and social skills of children and adults with autism is pivotal to achieving positive long-term outcomes. Those living and working with people with autism work daily to enhance social interactions.

Where the focus is on children, parents and carers; speech and language therapists; clinical psychologists; youth workers; teachers, learning mentors and learning support assistants; education welfare officers and educational psychologists share the challenge. There are several structured approaches which focus on teaching young people social skills in group settings. These include

• Talkabout (Kelly, 1997)
• Socially Speaking (Schroeder, 1998)
• Autism: A Social Skills Approach for Children and Adolescents (Aarons & Gittens, 1998)
• Social Use of Language Programme (Rinaldi, 2001)
• Navigating the Social Worlds: A Curriculum for Individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome and High Functioning Autism and Related Disorders (McAfee, 2002)
• Groupwork for Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders Ages 11–16 (Eggert et al, 2008).

There are often difficulties in implementing such programmes whether in special-school or mainstream settings. Typically, social skills programmes rely on a small group work in which the practitioner – usually the teacher – brings together young people with broadly similar social impairments, at a predetermined time, usually weekly, to develop socially appropriate skills.

For the teacher, the child with ASD and the parent, a group-learning situation may be problematic. For the teacher, the problems stem from gathering together a sensitive and responsive peer group, each of which will benefit from the social skills group while not missing out on other important aspects of the school curriculum. For the child, there are other likely difficulties, including the anxieties connected with group-learning situations; the challenge of the subject matter (ie, social interaction and social understanding are core long-standing impairments for the child); the language demands of social skills group work and the difficulties of generalising the skills learned in the group sessions to everyday experiences. For the parents there are problems in maintaining timely and pertinent two-way communication with the school so that school staff are aware of the child’s community-based social skills issues, and equally that parents are aware not only of the current focus of school-based social skills programmes but also their role in helping generalisation.

Social stories (Gray, 1994) offer an alternative to social skills group work – a more individual and flexible approach. Social stories are short, written stories, originally developed for children with autism (but now increasingly used with adults). They help children and adults understand a small part of their social world and learn about how others behave in such situations. Each social story provides clear, concise and accurate information about what is happening in a specific social situation, outlining both why it is happening and what a typical response might be. The three examples given here were written for people of very different ages and abilities. They show clearly the need for accurate and concise stories written to meet individual needs.

Story 1: Why we use the toilet at nursery

(Written for James, aged four years, who seemed unmotivated to use the toilet.)

Babies wear nappies.

Nappies get wet and smelly.

Sometimes nappies are not very comfortable.

Most grown-ups don’t like changing nappies.

Big boys and girls wear pants.

Most children come to nursery in pants.

I come to nursery in pants.

Most children in the nursery do their wee and poo in the toilet.

Grown-ups are pleased when children use the toilet.

Mummy and my teacher will be happy when I sit on the toilet.

I will try to do my wee and poo in the toilet at nursery.

Story 2: Answering questions in French lessons

(Written for David, an able Year 9 student who, until the story was written, could, and did, answer all the teacher’s questions to the exclusion of the other students.)

My name is David, and I am 14 years old.

At school I am learning a foreign language. Ms Garrard takes us for French. During my language lessons the teacher asks us to complete a variety of tasks. One of these may be a listening task. Sometimes during listening tasks we have to write down our own answers. This gives me and everyone else the opportunity to give our own answers.

At other times we do not write down our answers, but put up our hands so that the teacher can choose one student to give the answer orally.

The other students and I have the opportunity to show we know the answer. I will try to write my answers in silence during listening tasks. I will try to wait until I am chosen to give my answers orally.

My friends will be pleased when I complete listening tasks in this way.

Story 3: Lucy's story – how to get ready for training

(Written for Lucy, an adult with Asperger’s syndrome who worked as part of a professional training team. Her job was to help others understand what it feels like to have autism.)

My job is to talk to all new staff about what it feels like to be a person with autism and learning difficulties.

This is an important job and people like to listen to me.

The night before the training there are things to do.

Trainers are professionals: the audience like it if I look professional.

I know that it [is] good to have a shower and wash my hair. I can do that.

People like it if my clothes are clean. I will try to put clean clothes out ready on the chair the night before.

I always set my alarm clock. I will ask Sam to knock on my door at 0700 o’clock to make sure I am up.

The people I work with will like it if I am on time and look professional.

Each story seeks to provide the recipient with answers to key questions about a problematic social situation, such as

• ■ What is happening?
• ■ Who is doing what?
• ■ Why is it happening?
• ■ What cultural or institutional rules or individual reasons govern what people are doing?
• ■ What are the typical socially acceptable responses for the child or adult in the specific situation?

By answering such questions overtly, a social story makes explicit what other typically developing children and adults pick up incidentally from the common, covert social messages embedded in everyday social situations. People with autism are often unable to work out what is going on just by piecing together the social cues of a given social situation. To those living or working with people with autism, these areas of idiosyncratic social difficulty are not surprising. In contrast, for those with little experience of autism such difficulties are likely to engender disbelief, confusion or even amazement. Social stories have been written to clarify situations such as the following:

• ■ Why I should keep my clothes on in the toilet.
• ■ Why eating something other than cheese is important.
• ■ Why it is OK to cross out words when writing in class.
• ■ What a friend is.
• ■ How to speak to a friend.
• ■ Why it is important to wash and comb my hair before I go to work.

From this list it becomes clear that social stories often set down on the page what typically developing children and adults ‘just know’; what they have learned incidentally during their daily social experiences.

The original work in this field – The New Social Story Book (Gray, 1994) – and Gray’s later works 2010) are full of apposite stories ranging in length from 10 to 150 words, with titles such as ‘Trying new foods’, ‘Can I hold the baby?’, ‘Listening to the teacher’ and ‘Assemblies’, titles that strike a chord with those living or working with children with autism. Thanks to the energy and commitment of Carol Gray, the positive impact of social stories has been felt worldwide not only by people with autism but also by those striving to meet their needs. Gray’s analysis of her direct work, and its subsequent review with parents and other practitioners, has led to a structured intervention that can be implemented readily by others. Like all good inventions, the social stories approach formalises much that parents, teachers and support workers have been trying to do, in an ad hoc fashion, in homes, schools and other settings for many years. Parents, teachers and support workers view, as one of their key tasks, the need to explain to the child or adult the nature of their immediate social world, and to outline the broad expectations of behaviour. Typically, these explanations have largely relied on ‘telling’ – that is, giving verbal clarifications, repeated, simplified and rephrased. Social stories promote a way of doing this for those whose levels of language and social understanding limit their ability to learn effectively from solely listening to the advice handed down from caring adults. Social stories give parents, teachers and support workers another way of offering sensitive guidance where difficulties with language and communication make the traditional verbal means less effective. In particular, social stories provide people with autism who have impaired social understanding with an opportunity to access information about what is going on around them in a visual way. It enables them to gain a level of understanding about the assumptions, expectations and intricacies inherent in a particular social situation. A good social story builds on the fundamental belief that most people with autism are keen to do what is right, and to behave in socially appropriate ways, if only they knew what they were.

About this book

Writing & Developing Social Stories is based on the author’s 30 years of experience working in the field of autism. That experience includes work carried out as a specialist educational psychologist in a wide range of settings, focused research into the effectiveness of social stories and information shared by people attending the author’s national and international training events.

This book builds on that work, and aims to offer practical support to anyone meeting the needs of people with autism. It is principally intended for parents, carers and those working in schools. It is also hoped that it will be useful to those outside the formal systems of education who provide support to a child or an adult with autism. Social stories are used to support social and leisure pursuits, transitions into work, school and work place behaviour, independent and supported living and those trying to understand the relationships and behaviours that permeate their social and emotional world.

How to use this book

The book is divided into four chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 provide an introduction to the theory and practice of writing social stories. After reading these, someone wishing to construct a social story should have the skill and knowledge to do so. Even so, as with all new skills, they are likely to have some anxieties and self-doubt about whether their efforts will be successful. Therefore Chapter 3 provides examples of successful social stories written by parents and those working in schools or community settings. However, Chapter 3 does not aim to provide an ‘off the peg’ resource from which readers may simply lift a story previously written for one person and present it verbatim to another. Rather, it aims to give the novice writer both a means to check their own story against the examples provided and a resource that offers ways of saying things when a good turn of phrase is proving elusive. Finally, Chapter 4 seeks to enable those who, inspired by their work in this field, wish to support others in the development of similar skills through training.

It is advised that readers do not begin the task of writing social stories without reading the background theory and practice set out in Chapters 1 and 2. These chapters help parents and practitioners to write and use social stories sensitively, purposefully and effectively. However, experience indicates that many involved in meeting the needs of people with autism want, and need, to act swiftly. Chapters 1 and 2 work in tandem, and short cuts are not advised. Where time is pressing, it is certainly possible to construct a successful story when working with a group of parents and professionals in which one person, at least, has read these core chapters.

This introductory chapter builds...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 2 WRITING AND IMPLEMENTING A SOCIAL STORY
• CHAPTER 3 SAMPLE STORIES
• CHAPTER 4 DELIVERING TRAINING ABOUT SOCIAL STORIES
• Bibliography