Charlottesville: PEERS

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Dungeons and Dragons


PEERS for Young Adults is a 16-week social skills training program designed to help young adults with autism spectrum disorder and other social challenges make and keep friends. The Choice Group began its fourth cohort with a group of young adults and their social coaches in Charlottesville in January 2020. After meeting in person weekly through February, the PEERS instructors took a creative approach in order to comply with COVID-19 social distancing norms and regulations while at the same time ensuring the students could complete all of modules as scheduled. Setting up Zoom meetings and creating Power Point lessons, the PEERS instructors presented the lessons on, “Dating Etiquette”, “Handling Disagreements”, and “Bullying” online. Feedback from the students and their social coaches was positive and the students are scheduled to graduate on time and look forward to continuing their weekly meetings, but as a group social club doing Dungeons and Dragons via Zoom.  

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