Story of Friendship:
Held at Creekside Elementary School at Martin Park
Funded through the Scottish Rite Foundation

Amy Thrasher, MA, CCC-SLP, Clinical Instructor,
Speech Language Hearing Center, CU Boulder
Amy.thrasher@colorado.edu
303-492-3047
Update: March, 2008

Story of Friendship is an intervention designed to support social communication between young children with Autism Spectrum and their typical peers.  Since 2004, Story of Friendship had been held at the Speech Language Hearing Center at CU Boulder to promote social interaction between children within the context of play related to a familiar story.

According to the Center for Disease Control’s latest figures (2007), Autism Spectrum Disorders affects children at an alarming rate of 1 in 150.  Autism is considered a neurobiological disorder that affects children’s social interaction, communication and behavior.  These challenges pose significant obstacles to a family’s dream of their child developing friendships.   At the same time, those very friendships that are usually established in childhood can foster valuable lifelong skills in understanding social expectations,  getting along with others, and simply, but certainly most importantly, enjoying the company of others. Story of Friendship seeks to provide access to friendships for children with Autism by providing them with the support they need in order to experience successful and rewarding interactions with their peers.

Scottish Rite Foundation’s generous funding of scholarships for each of our 5 families with children with Autism enrolled in the program has allowed the Speech Language Hearing Center to move the Story of Friendship intervention to the children’s natural setting: the school.  We are partnering with Creekside Elementary School at Martin Park, in Boulder to provide Story of Friendship as an “afterschool program” parallel to other programs currently offered to children at Creekside.  Most, if not all, of our children enrolled in Story of Friendship would have needed significant social support to enroll in the existing afterschool programs.  Additionally, other afterschool programs have nominal fees that allow access to children of all socioeconomic backgrounds.  However, high quality social communication intervention with high teacher to child ratios cannot be provided at the same cost as the other afterschool programs. Thus, Scottish Rite Foundation’s support has allowed children with Autism access to afterschool programming at Creekside as well as the benefits of a program specifically designed to meet their social communication needs.  Without Scottish Rite Foundation’s funding, this move to the children’s natural environment would likely not have occurred.

This move to the children’s natural environment has dramatically increased the benefits of Story of Friendship for all participants, including the children with Autism and their typically developing peers, the families involved, the collaborating service providers, and our graduate student clinicians in Speech-Language Pathology.    First and foremost, the children with Autism are in their natural setting.  We focus on developing positive interactions with their actual classmates from school.   Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder have demonstrated particular challenges in generalizing skills; that is, they have great difficulty applying skills learned in one environment within a new context.  By providing services within the children’s actual school setting, we are reducing the challenges inherent with transferring skills across intervention settings.  

Since children with Autism are now participating in an afterschool program with their typical peers within the context of the school setting, the typically developing children are supported to see the children with Autism as more likely candidates for friendships during the regular school day.  Although we never specifically address who does and who does not have communication needs, in Story of Friendship typically developing children are encouraged to the see what they have in common with children with Autism.  They are exposed to the value of acceptance of differences in communication styles and the value of friendships with children of varying abilities.  The typical children can carryover their perspectives into the classrooms of their positive experiences in Story of Friendship with children with Autism. 

Providing the Story of Friendship intervention as an afterschool program has greatly reduced logistical issues for families of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.  These families tend to have an variety of therapeutic interventions to schedule and transport their children to, based on the nature of their children’s needs and the recommendation of the National Research Council (2000) of at least 25 hours of a comprehensive program of services per week.  Several of the children walk over together from their classrooms when the school bell rings.  Reducing family stress is no small gift to families, considering the complex needs of children with Autism that families strive to manage and cope with as best they can.

For graduate student clinicians in Speech-Language Pathology, participating in Story of Friendship at the children’s actual school setting has had enormous benefits.  The graduate clinicians are able to observe the children in the context of school and to observe the strategies of teachers and service providers.  This opportunity for face to face contact with the children’s teachers and service providers is invaluable for students who have begun to engage in service provision in a setting that may be similar to that which they will work in upon graduation.  And of course, the streamlining of communication between the school, the family and the graduate students in Story of Friendship positively impacts all of our interactions with the children.

This update on Story of Friendship would not be complete without accolades for the staff at Creekside Elementary School at Martin Park.  From the principal’s first eager greeting of our proposal to the weekly communications about children’s development between graduate clinicians and teachers, Creekside Elementary has embraced Story of Friendship and greatly appreciated the generosity of the Scottish Rite Foundation.