ABSTRACT
D EVELOPING THE SOCIAL SKILLS and social understanding of children and
young people with autistic spectrum difficulties (ASD) is a challenge
shared by parents and carers; speech & language therapists; clinical
psychologists; youth workers; teachers and learning support assistants; education
welfare officers, and educational psychologists. Since the early 1990s, several
social skills programmes have become commercially available, providing a basic
social skills curriculum, as well as a supportive framework for programme delivery.
These include Socially Speaking (Schroeder, 1997), Talkabout (Kelly, 1996), and Social
