An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Social Skills Application for Children who are Homeless

Researchers have found children who are homeless are twice as likely to develop learning disabilities when compared with non-homeless children and three times as likely to develop emotional and behavioral problems (Bessuk et al., 2014). Additionally, homeless children are more likely to have deficits in regards to social skills (DiBiase & Waddell, 1995; National Child Traumatic Stress Network Homelessness and Extreme Poverty Working Group, 2005), however no known research has specifically explored increasing social skill deficits among homeless children. The purpose of the current research was to a) extend the research on using technology to teach social skills to homeless children and b) examine the efficacy of using the Let’s Be Social application (Everyday Speech, 2015) to teach social skills with the addition of Behavioral Skills Training (BST) if needed. The results of this study showed that participants demonstrated substantial increases in all three social skills after the BST intervention. With the exception of one participant, Sandy, whose baseline levels for one behavior (sharing) met criteria for the skill and did not need further intervention