Open House for FREE Social Skills Workshops

Tanika Richardson
Published: July 25, 2013

Do you know teenagers or young adults who have difficulty making and keeping friends? Would they benefit from a proven social skills intervention?

If so, then please introduce them to PEERS®, a social skills intervention for teens and young adults that only recently became available in Chicagoland.Center for Companies That Care a non-profit organizarion has been awarded a grant from CVS/Caremark to offer 3 sessions of this intervention for FREE!

Developed by Ph.D. researchers at UCLA, PEERS® (Program for the Education and Enrichment for Relational Skills) has been proven to show significant improvement in social skills for people with autism spectrum disorder and other socio-emotional disorders such as anxiety, depression and ADHD. We have included a 2011 article published in theJournal of the Autism and Developmental Disorders (Laugeson, Frankel, Mogil & Dillon 2011) about PEERS® outcomes. We also included a PEOPLE Magazine article about the PEERS® program which may be helpful when sharing this methodology with your patients and their families. PEERS® is the only evidence-based approach to socialskills intervention. Facilitators must be certified on-site at UCLA in order to teach this course.

Through our Invisible Differences program, Center for Companies That Care, a national 501c3 non-profit, supports adolescents and young adults with neurobehavioral and learning disabilities to complete their education and engage in productive careers doing work they love. We recently became certified in PEERS® in order to bring this outstanding program to Chicago.

We are currently seeking motivated applicants for our upcoming session beginning in fall 2013. Enrollment is limited. If someone you know would benefit from a program such as PEERS®, please share the flyer. You can also share the invitation to our open house screening to all interested families. For more information, please call our office at 312.661.1010 or contact me by email at tanikarichardson@companies-that-care.org. To learn more about PEERS®, please visit our website www.companies-that-care.org/invisibledifferences or the PEERS® website itself,http://www.semel.ucla.edu/peers.

Please join us on Tuesday, August 6th between 3-8pm for our Open House for PEERS®. Parents and teens can stop by any time to complete their screening and intake materials! Educators and health professionals can stop by to learn more about the program. Click here to register!

Thank you in advance for sharing this information with your loved one or clients.

Keywords: ADHD, Autism, Free, OCD, social skills, teens, workshops, young adults