Child and Caregiver Perspectives on Conversation Club Therapy: A Case Study

Conversation Club is a community-based intervention developed to support social and conversation skills in both neurodiverse and neurotypical children who may need additional support in these areas. The purpose of this preliminary evaluation is to examine the efficacy of Conversation Club delivered in the local setting.

This mixed-methods case study involved a child-caregiver dyad. Pre-post intervention data were collected through interview and battery of tests assessing social skills (e.g., Social Skills Improvement System; Social Responsiveness Scale).

Both the child and caregiver shared that they were satisfied with Conversation Club and felt that the child benefitted from the curriculum. Results also indicated that the child made a reliable change on both self- and caregiver-measures of social and conversation skills, but results were mixed for behaviour indices. Interestingly, the child rated their social skills as average before and after intervention, compared to elevated social impairments perceived by the caregiver at both time points.

An overall strength of this case study was to include the perspective of the child participant, in addition to the caregiver report, to evaluate the social validity and acceptance of the intervention for teaching conversation skills.