Social Skills Group

GROUP PROTOCOL

Population: Adult, Female, Inpatient mental health (state hospital), Court mandated

Frame of Reference/Model
MOHO

Frame of Reference Rationale

MOHO best fits my group intervention plan because of its major premise: volition guides occupational behavior
in ways that are meaningful, pleasurable, and likely to have a desired effect on environment. Therefore, ideal
clients for MOHO have low motivation to engage in activities, poor role performance, maladaptive habits and
routines, and an absence of interests. The women that will be attending my group intervention have rarely
participated in pervious group activities and show very little motivation or interest in the group sessions. Goals
of MOHO include; to restore order in daily functioning, internally and externally, to find and engage in
meaningful occupations and roles, and it is concerned with performance of normal daily occupations (work, ADL,
IADL, Social participation). This works out perfectly because the group intervention I am doing to going to
address social skills and team building.
Focus of Intervention
Engaging and competitive team building activity focused on social participation and implementing adaptive
social skills.

Purpose To engage an adult, female, inpatient mental health population in a friendly and fun
team building game designed to have them practice social skills and to get to know more
about each other.
Outcome Criteria Increase in social skills and social participation
Leadership Style & Facilitative leadership: I will split the room into two groups and explain the purpose/goal
Group Structure of the activity I provide them. After this, the two groups are on their own to work
together against the clock to finish the activity before the buzzer goes off. 10 clients (5
in each group) engaging in group activity with 1 COTA, 1 TR, and 1 S/TR observing
group intervention.
Supplies, Printed out copies of “Find Someone Who...” sheet, crayons, chairs, timer/buzzer, and
Equipment, Costs stickers (as a “prize”). These were all provided by the facility, so the cost was free.
Precautions Appropriate behavior from all members when using paper, crayons, and chairs; Avoid
triggering language or actions.

Description of Session
Format and Team Building Exercise with Social Skills and Strategies Discussion (45 minutes)
Estimated Time
Introduction - I will begin the group with an easy warm-up. This will hopefully capture the group’s
attention and create a relaxing environment before I enter right into explaining the
content of the session. The warm-up questions will be: “Does anyone remember my
name?” “Does anyone remember what school I’m from?” I’ll give hints on the school name
if need be, as I’ll be wearing OSU gear, and I’ll provide my name as an introduction.
Then I’ll ask, “Does anyone remember the name of the group?” “Does anyone remember
what we’ve talked about in groups this week?” (provide cues to jug memories and
promote thinking past group intervention take-away points. I will connect the topics
discussed during the week to the current purpose of the group. I will then provide a brief
outline of the session explaining how the game will go: “I’m going to split you into two
groups. So, get ready for some friendly competition because you guys will be racing
against the clock. You will have 7 minutes as a team to work together and fill out as
many items on the “Find Someone Who” as you can.” During this time, I will also answer
any questions and provide further clarification.
Flinn, S. (2014)
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Activity Group members will be split up into equal sized teams and form a little circle of chairs
(can be more than two groups depending on how many people attend). A crayon and a
“Find Someone Who” sheet will be passed out to each individual. I will start the 7 minute
timer on the count of 3, then each team will work together to fill out as many items on the
sheet as they can (A verbal example on how to fill out the sheet should be provided:
“#1 says ‘Visited another country’ so as a group you would talk to each other and write
down all the names of the people in your group who fit this item, meaning they have
visited another country. You continue to do this for all 15 items.”). How the items on the
activity sheet are addressed is group dependent.
Questions on the “Find Someone Who” activity include:
1. Visited another country
2. Enjoys seafood
3. Has a brother
4. Works in VAS
5. Can play an instrument
6. Has a birthday this month
7. Has the color green on their socks
8. Loves the beach
9. Played a sport in school
10. Has won an award
11. Went to college
12. Knows how to make a recipe from scratch
13. Is wearing their hair up
14. Like cats more than dogs
15. Likes dogs more than cats
After the buzzer goes off the teams will stop writing and put their crayons down.
Sharing The groups will move back into the 1 big circle of chairs that they were in at the start of
the group (including the therapists and students). This will allow for a more open and
comfortable environment to share in. I will ask for a volunteer to read the first item and
what their group had written down. Then I will ask the entire group to raise their hand if
they fit that item. We will then continue around in a circle having each client read an
item and having the group raise their hand if they fit this item (including the therapists
and students). This will open a discussion of shared experiences throughout the entire
group. I will provide prompting questions to help further the conversation. For example,
for those who raised their hand for item 12 a prompting question could be “what recipe
do you know how to make?” “that sounds delicious!”
Processing I will ask prompting questions such as:
- Did you enjoy this activity?
- How did you feel doing this as a group?
- What was easy? What was more challenging?
- Do you learn something new about someone?
- What social skills did you use when talking to group members?
Generalizing I will summarize common responses between groups and draw patterns of similarities
brought out from the sharing and processing portions. For example:
- “It seems like a lot of us have brothers.”
- “There seems to be more cat lovers and dog lovers in the room, who knew?”
Application I will then ask questions that will help open up a discussion about how this activity relates
back to the groups purpose and what people can take away from the session. For
example:
- “If we did this paper individually how would it be different?”
- “Do you think you’d be able to fill out all the items on the sheet based on only
your experiences?”
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We were more successful completing the activity as a group. We all have had different
experiences and therefore we all offer something special to the team/group. We need
other people in our lives to be successful in our occupations. People offer support, new
ideas, and socialization.
- “What aspects of this activity can you use when interacting with others in your
lives?’
- Social skills: taking turns, listening to each other, making eye contact, and making
connections with others based on shared experiences
Summary Today we introduced ourselves and split into two groups where we worked together to
complete a team building activity. This game allowed us to practice proper and
adaptive social skills that we’ve been talking about throughout the week and an
opportunity to socialize and get to know each other better. I would like you to take the
social skills you used here to better engage with the people in our lives. Practice working
as a team.

References
Weaver, L. (2017). Group Approaches_Cognitive Disabilities_MOHO_OT 6130. The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH
Weaver, L. (2017). Group Leadership & Theory_OT 6130. The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

Reflection
1) What went well?

There were several things that went well during my group intervention. First, there was 10 clients
that came to the group session which allowed me to split the room into two, equally numbered, teams of 5
people. Having the chairs set up in a circle was another plus because it allowed for more discussion and I
noticed that individuals were participating more than usual. Additionally, the warm-up activity got them
engaged and ready to participate, while using a facilitative leadership style allowed for the clients to
converse and solve problems as a team in order to complete the activity. As the main goal of the activity
was to have them engage in a team building exercise to practice social skills, I believe that a facilitative
leadership style worked out really well. Clients conversed with each other more than I had seen
previously.

2) What didn’t go well? What would you change if you ran this group again? What changes did you
make on the fly?

What didn’t go as well was my description of how to complete the activity. I had not practice
saying the instructions out load prior to running the group and I found that I needed to repeat them in a
simpler way as many clients showed confusion. During the discussion after the activity, I had a tendency to
ask multifaceted questions which were too much information for the clients to take in at once, and caused
confusion. I corrected these issues on the fly by restating my questions one at a time with simple
vernacular. If there were still some confusions I would provide an example of an answer or I would
reframe the question so that it was more tailored to one client and have them answer it. This allowed the
Clients a more direct and concrete form of question instead of a general question that might have been
too abstract for them to interpret. If I ran this group again I would use a different timer because it was
very loud and distracting even before the buzzer went off. Additionally, a visual timer would’ve been
more helpful for this population as a visual representation of the time left was a more concrete concept
than minutes remaining.

3) What did you learn about yourself as a therapist from running this group?
From running this group, I learned the important role of the OT as a group leader and facilitator.
I learned that how I phrase, and present questions and activities influences how the clients engage in the
session. Furthermore, I had the chance to practice using my clinical judgement on when to provide
prompting questions would be beneficial.