Attention: Parents, Guardians and Community Members
The South Shore Regional School Board and Autism Nova Scotia, South Shore Chapter are pleased to announce a presentation regarding a new program that the SSRSB is introducing at the Secondary Level called PEERS.
The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) was originally developed at UCLA by Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson, Founder and Director of the UCLA PEERS Clinic, and Dr. Fred Frankel in 2005 and has expanded to locations across the United States and the world. PEERS is a manualized, social skills training intervention for adolescents and young adults. It has a strong evidence-base for use with teens and young adults with autism spectrum disorders, but is also appropriate for teens and young adults with ADHD, anxiety, depression, and other socio-emotional problems.
We would like to invite you to an evening presentation on Thursday, October 30th, with Doctor Elizabeth Laugeson author of the PEERS Program from UCLA, California.
Read more for registration information and to learn more about Dr. Laugeson.
Date: Thursday, October 30th
Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Location: South Shore Regional School Board, 69 Wentzell Drive, Bridgewater, NS
RSVP would be appreciated.
Please register through Diana Knock at 902-541-3021or email Diana at: dknock@ssrsb.ca
Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson
Elizabeth Laugeson, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Dr. Laugeson is the Founder and Director of the UCLA PEERS Clinic, which is an outpatient hospital-based program providing parent-assisted social skills training for adolescents and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other social impairments. She is also the Director of The Help Group – UCLA Autism Research Alliance, which is a collaborative research initiative dedicated to developing and expanding applied clinical research in the treatment of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.
Dr. Laugeson has been a principal investigator and collaborator on a number of NIH and CDC-funded studies investigating social skills training for children and adolescents with social difficulties from preschool to early adulthood and is the co-developer of an evidence-based social skills intervention for teens and young adults known as PEERS.
Since 2010, she has authored three books related to social skills training including, TheScience of Making Friends: Helping Socially Challenged Teens and Young Adults,Social Skills for Teenagers with Developmental and Autism Spectrum Disorders: The PEERS Treatment Manual, and The PEERS Curriculum for School-BasedProfessionals: Social Skills Training for Adolescents with Autism SpectrumDisorder. She was a two-time recipient of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health in 2004 and 2006, the recipient of the Semel Scholar Award for Junior Faculty Career Development in 2008, and received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Pepperdine University in 2010.
Having trained thousands of mental health professionals, educators, and families in the PEERS method, Dr. Laugeson is dedicated to developing and testing evidence-based treatments to improve social skills across the lifespan, and disseminating these empirically supported programs across the globe.
At present, the PEERS manuals have been translated into at least six languages and the program is used in over a dozen countries. Dr. Laugeson has presented her ground-breaking research at international conferences throughout the world including the U.S., Canada, England, Finland, Italy, Australia, and China. Her work has been featured on national and international media outlets such as People Magazine, USA Today, the LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.