Social Skills Groups
Our social skills groups are one– or two–hour sessions held daily on weekdays and Saturday where your child is carefully matched to a small group of other children based on his or her developmental level, and receives instruction from a multi-disciplinary team of speech–language pathologists, child development specialists, and behavior therapists in pragmatics, play, language, appropriate behaviors, social cognition, and social skills. Some children elect to participate in more than one group per week. Instruction is tailored to the children in the group, but is based on Social Thinking®, a teaching methodology created by Michelle Garcia Winner (www.socialthinking.com), and typical examples of covered topics include:
Sarah feels very strongly that social skills groups work best when the children in the group are developmentally matched, so it may take some time to get enough matched children to have an effective group. So we place all interested children on a waiting list, and then notify parents when Sarah thinks she has a good group to confirm schedules so we can start the group.
- conversational skills (e.g., how to initiate a topic with a peer and stay on topic)
- appropriate behaviors
- impulse control
- problem solving
- navigating the playground
- joining in play with peers
- successful play dates
- body boundaries
- recognizing emotion in self and others and empathy
- perspective taking
- dealing with bullying
- friendship
- manners
- cooperative play
- sharing and taking turns
- safety
- teamwork
- dealing with frustration
- increasing mental flexibility
- reducing rigidity
- expanding social language skills
- body language and non-verbal communication
- asking for help, when needed
Sarah feels very strongly that social skills groups work best when the children in the group are developmentally matched, so it may take some time to get enough matched children to have an effective group. So we place all interested children on a waiting list, and then notify parents when Sarah thinks she has a good group to confirm schedules so we can start the group.
Community Integration Support
At SSLP, our community integration coaches offer our pediatric clients support in the form of services that are individually tailored to help your child acquire, improve, or maintain the skills needed to fully and independently participate in all aspects of life in your community, alongside and in the same way as their peers. Services are tailored to your child’s individualized needs, but typically focus on socialization, community integration, self-help, and other adaptive skills your child needs to fully and meaningfully participate in events and activities in your community.
Our community integration support focuses on areas such as play skills (play is the “work of childhood” and often the primary method of interacting with peers), leveraging existing communication skills to be used with peers and adults in their community (as opposed to strictly developing new communication skills, which is what we do in our speech therapy sessions), and social skills and pragmatic language (helping children to understand the unwritten rules and expectations when interacting both with peers and adults in their communities, so that they can navigate interactions in their own communities to achieve positive outcomes). We help your child build the skills needed to have meaningful, sustained positive interactions with all of the people in his or her natural environments.
That means different things to different children, and we meet your child where they are. For example, for younger children or children are just emerging with communication and pragmatic skills, our focus might be on core social communication and play skills while ensuring they remain emotionally regulated and can engage in joint attention, using methods such as JASPER® intervention to promote joint attention, symbolic play, engagement and regulation. More advanced support might focus on social pragmatic language and emotional self-regulation using evidence-based frameworks, as well as advanced communication focusing on effective self-advocacy to ensure physical and emotional well-being and greater independence as they venture out into the broader world. A strong focus is always on helping children generate positive sustained interactions with peers leading to friendships. With our older preadolescent, adolescent and young adult clients, we also offer opportunities to practice their skills in their community, such as at local parks, stores, restaurants, and community centers, giving them a solid foundation in communication, pragmatic, and pre–vocational skills as well as the confidence to generalize their abilities to their own communities when outside of our sessions.
We include time for parent awareness and training as well as coordination with other caregivers and therapists to ensure continuity and carryover at home and other natural settings and for productive two-way dialog to ensure that skills are generalizing into children’s natural environments.
Our community integration support focuses on areas such as play skills (play is the “work of childhood” and often the primary method of interacting with peers), leveraging existing communication skills to be used with peers and adults in their community (as opposed to strictly developing new communication skills, which is what we do in our speech therapy sessions), and social skills and pragmatic language (helping children to understand the unwritten rules and expectations when interacting both with peers and adults in their communities, so that they can navigate interactions in their own communities to achieve positive outcomes). We help your child build the skills needed to have meaningful, sustained positive interactions with all of the people in his or her natural environments.
That means different things to different children, and we meet your child where they are. For example, for younger children or children are just emerging with communication and pragmatic skills, our focus might be on core social communication and play skills while ensuring they remain emotionally regulated and can engage in joint attention, using methods such as JASPER® intervention to promote joint attention, symbolic play, engagement and regulation. More advanced support might focus on social pragmatic language and emotional self-regulation using evidence-based frameworks, as well as advanced communication focusing on effective self-advocacy to ensure physical and emotional well-being and greater independence as they venture out into the broader world. A strong focus is always on helping children generate positive sustained interactions with peers leading to friendships. With our older preadolescent, adolescent and young adult clients, we also offer opportunities to practice their skills in their community, such as at local parks, stores, restaurants, and community centers, giving them a solid foundation in communication, pragmatic, and pre–vocational skills as well as the confidence to generalize their abilities to their own communities when outside of our sessions.
We include time for parent awareness and training as well as coordination with other caregivers and therapists to ensure continuity and carryover at home and other natural settings and for productive two-way dialog to ensure that skills are generalizing into children’s natural environments.
Speech and Language Therapy
Sarah and her team of pediatric speech-language pathologists work exclusively with children, primarily between the ages of 18 months to 10 years. She and her team specialize in evaluating and treating children with, but also has extensive experience in evaluating and treating children with:
Sarah is one of the handful of therapists certified (as opposed to merely trained) by the PROMPT Institute in the PROMPT® technique, which is a well-regarded instruction modality that is often particularly effective for children with apraxia. She is the only PROMPT certified therapist on the Westside of Los Angeles. In addition, she has extensive training and experience with a variety of other instruction modalities, including social cognition therapy, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)®, Pivotal Response Training (PRT)®, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), floor time, TEACCH®, and various programs of The Hanen Centre®.
Sarah has continuously been the holder of a Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech–Language Pathology from the American Speech–Language Hearing Association (ASHA Number 12086278) since 2003, and has been licensed as a Speech–Language Pathologist by the California Speech–Language Pathology and Audiology and Hearing Aid Dispenser Board since 2003 (License Number SP 13706).
- an apraxia of speech (Sarah is PROMPT Certified and all members of her team has PROMPT training)
- auditory processing disorders
- autism and other developmental disorders
- receptive and expressive language delays and disorders
- articulation and phonological disorders
- pragmatic language deficits and delays
Sarah is one of the handful of therapists certified (as opposed to merely trained) by the PROMPT Institute in the PROMPT® technique, which is a well-regarded instruction modality that is often particularly effective for children with apraxia. She is the only PROMPT certified therapist on the Westside of Los Angeles. In addition, she has extensive training and experience with a variety of other instruction modalities, including social cognition therapy, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)®, Pivotal Response Training (PRT)®, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), floor time, TEACCH®, and various programs of The Hanen Centre®.
Sarah has continuously been the holder of a Certificate of Clinical Competence in Speech–Language Pathology from the American Speech–Language Hearing Association (ASHA Number 12086278) since 2003, and has been licensed as a Speech–Language Pathologist by the California Speech–Language Pathology and Audiology and Hearing Aid Dispenser Board since 2003 (License Number SP 13706).
JASPER®
Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation (JASPER)® is a treatment approach based on a combination of developmental and behavioral principles developed by Dr. Connie Kasari at the University of California, Los Angeles. JASPER® is a naturalistic developmental intervention that targets deficits in the domain of social communication, focusing on joint attention, engagement, and play, which are the foundations of social communication, and utilizing naturalistic strategies to bolster children’s social communication.
Sarah is a certified JASPER direct service clinician.
The four core domains of JASPER® are:
Sarah is a certified JASPER direct service clinician.
The four core domains of JASPER® are:
- Joint Attention – encouraging children to share experiences with others by coordinating attention between objects and people.
- Symbolic Play – helping children increase their play skills and flexibility through modeling appropriate play and encouraging joint attention while playing.
- Engagement – helping children to heighten their engagement with others results in more chances for learning and social communication.
- Regulation – both emotional and behavioral regulation is important to help children have positive interactions with others, and we help children stay engaged while avoiding dysregulation and behaviors that aren’t conducive to fostering relationships with others.
Myofunctional Therapy
Orofacial myofunctional disorders (OMDs) are maladaptive movement patterns of the muscles of the face, jaw and mouth that control speaking, swallowing, chewing, and facial expressions.
OMDs include tongue thrust, chronic mouth breathing, jaw and bite misalignment or persistent oral habits, which can negatively affect speech production, swallowing and feeding and dental alignment and which can cause sleep issues.
At SSLP, we use orofacial myotherapy and myofunctional therapy to help children re-train maladaptive oral muscle patterns into healthier, more functional habit, using targeted muscle exercises to improve speech, breathing, chewing and swallowing.
Sarah is a certified orofacial myofunctional therapist through the Academy of Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy.
OMDs include tongue thrust, chronic mouth breathing, jaw and bite misalignment or persistent oral habits, which can negatively affect speech production, swallowing and feeding and dental alignment and which can cause sleep issues.
At SSLP, we use orofacial myotherapy and myofunctional therapy to help children re-train maladaptive oral muscle patterns into healthier, more functional habit, using targeted muscle exercises to improve speech, breathing, chewing and swallowing.
Sarah is a certified orofacial myofunctional therapist through the Academy of Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy.
Play Skills Therapy
At SSLP, we provide play skills therapy to children with the goal of advancing their play skills through a hierarchal “play ladder” incorporating increasingly abstract and more symbolic and imaginative play skills, while increasing their general repertoire of play skills, which we believe will help improve the quality of their social interactions, as well as maximize their learning potential in group settings. Sessions are typically one or two hours in length and are taught by a clinician who has extensive experience in teaching play to children on the autism spectrum.