Our practice is guided by a scientist practitioner approach. That is, we are committed to a philosophy of using treatment approaches that are grounded in scientific evidence, using scientific approaches to track and monitor progress, and using what is learned during treatment to inform the larger scientific community. Toward this latter goal, we have decided to partner with Dr. Brendan Rich, assistant professor at the Catholic University of America (CUA), to conduct a research study of our group members’ improvement of their social skills, resilience, and self-regulation.
 
Our Social Competence Groups are unique in several ways, as they focus not only on building core social skills but also include an emphasis on resilience, self-regulation, and generalization activities. We also run the largest number of groups of this type in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. We hope that pilot data collected will set the foundation for a larger scale project that could potentially contribute to the science of the field and help children and families on a larger scale. 

Children and parents who are enrolled in our groups and meet the inclusion criteria will be asked to participate on a voluntary basis. For those who agree to participate, parents and children will be asked to complete measures and children may be asked to complete a computer task. Stay tuned for updates and preliminary results!