The Program that Teaches Social Skills & Activates Social Cognition

Dr. Bellini is a Licensed Psychologist and a faculty member with the Indiana University School Psychology Program. He is a prominent and highly impactful researcher in education and school psychology and the Director of the Social Skills Research Clinic, a university based clinic that specializes in developing and empirically validating social skills programming for youth on the autism spectrum. Dr. Bellini was identified by Grapin, Kranzler, and Daley (2013) as one of the Top 25 most cited school psychology faculty in the country. Dr. Bellini is also the author of the award winning book, Building Social Relationships, which has been honored as the Literary Work of the Year by the Autism Society of America and the winner of the National Indie Excellence Award in Education. 

The BSR program is a systematic research based social skills program that teaches social skills and activates social cognition in youth on the autism spectrum. The program allows parents and practitioners to stop "chasing" problem behaviors, and instead address the underlying causes of problem behaviors and social interaction difficulties. The BSR program highlights the simultaneous integration between social cognitive processing and the performance of discrete social skills. To reflect this in practice, the BSR program provides over 40 strategies to teach social skills and strategies to teach and activate social-cognitive processing in both children and adolescents. 

To date Dr. Bellini has provided professional development training to educators, therapists, and parents in over 40 states on the topic of social skills programming for youth on the autism spectrum. His workshops are designed to both increase knowledge and improve practice. The training is based on empirical data and a solid conceptual framework, but the workshops are also designed to improve the way participants teach social skills. Dr. Bellini's workshops are designed to be fun and engaging. Laughing  and learning are not mutually exclusive concepts! The workshops are appropriate for parents, teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists, behavior analysts, social workers, speech and language pathologists, physicians, occupational and recreational therapists, and just about any else who is interested in learning about social skills programming.