PEERS® for Adolescents Certified Training Seminar: Parents-Assisted Social Skills Training Program
The PEERS® for Adolescents Certified Training Seminar is designed to instruct mental health professionals, medical professionals, and/or educators on the administration and implementation of the parent-assisted PEERS® for Adolescents intervention in a clinical-type setting. This certified training provides a model for an evidence-based social skills treatment for teens in middle school and high school (age 11-18) with ASD, ADHD, Anxiety, Depression and other social difficulties, particularly with respect to friendships. This training includes a parent component on how to run the parent portion of the intervention. Trainings are conducted across 3 days (24 hours total of training), and included video demonstrations, role-playing exercises, clinical and research materials, and didactic instruction from Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson, Founder and Director of the UCLA PEERS® Clinic and co-developer of the PEERS® intervention. Dr. Laugeson is a licensed clinical psychologist and Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
Topics of instruction include:
- How to use appropriate conversational skills
- How to choose appropriate friends
- How to appropriately use electronic forms of communication
- How to appropriately use humor and assess humor feedback
- How to start, enter, and exit conversations between peers
- How to organize successful get-togethers with friends
- How to be a good sport when playing games/sports with friends
- How to handle arguments and disagreements with friends and in relationships
- How to handle rejection, teasing, bullying, and rumors/gossip
- How to change a bad reputation
Upon completion of this training, qualified participants were deemed “PEERS® Certified Providers” for the PEERS® for Adolescents program.