How to Write Social Stories

In case this might be useful in churches (and believe me it can be as I’ve written a few!) here’s my article about how to write social stories, even though the examples are school based.  The photo is page 1 but you can download the whole thing on my work website (link below).

Article Download

Just to give you an example of using these in our Good News Group, for a few months we had one of our members getting really cross and storming out of the main meeting because of many different reasons.  As leaders we would try all we could to comfort her and find out what was happening, but after a few weeks we realised that she was playing each of us against the other, and looking for whose attention she could get before storming out, throwing things off a table or similar activity. We chatted to her, discussed this fully with her carers and checked out that there was no other issues.  We also looked at environmental factors such as who she was sitting with etc. Anyway, after a good investigation I wrote a social story to help her feel secure and remind her of the positives about being at GNG.

Here is the text:

_____ goes to Good News Group

_______ travels with ____.  We pick _____ up too.

This is great.  We like to chat and sing in the car.

At Good News Group:  _____ gives out the badges. This is great.

We sit and chat with our friends.   We can be happy with our friends.

We have some tea. ____ can eat her tea and save a cake for supper.

We sing and sign. ____ likes to help.  Sometimes we do drama. ____likes to help.

We listen to a story from the Bible.

____ can sit and listen with her friends.

It is great to stay in church and join in.  Brilliant!

If _____ feels sad she can sit with____, _____ or ____.

They will make sure _____ feels better.

Brilliant!  _____ loves coming to Good News Group.

This has had a really positive effect and even though she still gets a little upset occasionally, I have seen her go straight to one of the leaders in the story and she is often back with us fairly soon.  All we want is for her to feel safe, loved and happy as part of our group.