AT's Story
“The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it.”
One of our longest residents, AT initially visited us for one day a week. He’s now with us from Monday to Friday - that is, when he’s not got work to do!
Often mischievous, quite physical and constantly on the move, AT sometimes misunderstood social boundaries. A fan of Disney, he would dramatically grab people in a playful way, and occasionally put them in headlocks, with any discouragement often misinterpreted. That’s until we introduced ‘Social Stories’ with the help of one our team of psychologists.
Social Stories were created by Carol Gray in 1991. They are brief and clear descriptions of a particular situation, event or activity, which include specific information about what can be expected in that situation and why. With AT, they have had remarkable results. The stories we developed integrated AT’s favourite characters behaving in a desired way, with the hope AT understood this and adopted this into his everyday routines.
An early breakthrough was with AT’s quite complex eating habits, which predominantly involved eating round foods, like pizza, peas and Smiley Faces. Now, he eats foods of all flavours, shapes and sizes.
As AT’s behaviour continued to improve, we and AT’s social worker liaised with Worklink (work-based training scheme), who took him on a full-time placement. Most recently, he has successfully started paid work, a clear indication of his massive transformation.