This study purposed to examine an intervention program to help the peer relationships of children from broken families and verify the effect. The subjects of this study were six children who gained low scores in the teacher's rating scale for social s...
This study purposed to examine an intervention program to help the peer relationships of children from broken families and verify the effect. The subjects of this study were six children who gained low scores in the teacher's rating scale for social skills among the children from broken families who were in the after-school class of a local social welfare center in Busan. These subjects were randomly devided to the experimental group and the control group.
The program consisted of group play activities such as games, role play and art work. The intervention sessions was composed 10 sessions, twice a week for five weeks, and 90min. per session. Data of control group and experimental group were collected through 20 minutes' videotaping in free play situation, and the frequencies of social behaviors were counted at intervals of 20 seconds(5 seconds' observation and 15 seconds' recording) by the author and two observers. The results of the test before and after treatment using social-behavior check list with peer rating system.
The result of this study is as follows :
First, the children from broken families who had low social skills changed in their social behavior with peers through structured group play therapy program using fairy tales, which was statistically significant. In other words, after intervention, a positive behavior increased while a negative behavior and unsocial behavior decreased.
Second, there were positive changes in the social skills of children from broken families, or there was no significant difference in the scores of social skills between the two groups before intervention while the experimental group showed higher scores of social skills than the control group after intervention, which was statistically significant.
Based on the above results, structured group play therapy using fairy tales can be effective for changing children from broken families, who had low social skills, in their social behavior with peers and enhancing their level of social skills.