Destination Friendship: Developing Social Skills for Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders or Other Social Challenges

Destination Friendship provides easy-to-use, research-based strategies and activities that support the development of friendship skills in children with ASD within an active and fun learning environment.

Adult Tour Guides (TGs) act as a personal GPS system by offering subtle coaching and social scripting throughout theme-based sessions that include social activities and situations in which children have immediate opportunities to practice their friendship skills. From the initial session, participants learn that what they say and do has a direct impact on others.

The Friendship Skills Checklist, a valuable tool included in this book, enables the user to identify the strengths and needs of individuals with ASD, resulting in a comprehensive assessment and interest inventory that can be used to guide social instruction and support.

This book was written by a team of two special educators, a speech-language pathologist, and an occupational therapist, all of whom have a life-long passion of working with individuals with special needs, their families, and schools to build skills that will improve and increase their quality of life.

"This book will be a wonderful resource for anyone interested in building self-esteem and developing and improving friendship and relationship skills of individuals with ASD. Any professional...family member, or community organization interested in helping individuals with social challenges make connections with others will find this book easy to read, with ready-to-use materials and activities that will help drive the development of programming..."
- Kelly McAndrew, MS, CCC-SLP