Intensive Interaction
Intensive interaction is an approach to interacting and teaching early communication and interaction skills to those who find it difficult to communicate or to be social. It is used with those who have learning disabilities, autistic spectrum disorder, physical impairments and sensory impairments.
Intensive interaction is used by a wide range of professionals, support staff, families and friends. Intensive Interaction can be used at any time and in any place, taking the opportunities as they arise.
Note: Leeds CYPMHS crisis call line is available to all children and young people living in Leeds who are concerned about keeping themselves safe. The call line is also available to parents, carers and professionals who are concerned about a child or young person.
You can contact the call line about yourself, a child or young person whether they are accessing our other services or not.
Further information
It aims to teach the basic fundamentals of communication, as well as helping to develop sociability, cognitive abilities and emotional wellbeing. The style of the ‘interaction partner’ is relaxed and responsive when joining in with the individual in their chosen activities. It is important to allow the individual to take the lead.
Intensive interaction works by gradually developing enjoyable and relaxed interactions between an individual and their ‘interaction partner’. During these sessions, the fundamentals of communication are rehearsed and learned in a free-flowing manner.
These include:
- Enjoying being with another person
- Developing the ability to attend to that person
- Developing concentration and attention span
- Learning to do sequences of activity with another person
- Taking turns in exchanges of behaviours
- Sharing personal space
- Understanding and using eye contact
- Understanding and using facial expressions
- Understanding and using physical contact
- Understanding and using non-verbal communication
- Using vocalisations with meaning
As part of an Intensive Interaction intervention, you will be asked to sign a consent form agreeing to the intervention.
As part of the intervention, you may be introduced a range of tools to support the young person such as a strengths and needs assessment. This is a simple tool that identifies a young person’s strengths (what a person is able to do) and their needs (what you need to do to meet that person’s strengths)
- The interaction should be ‘taskless’, it is the quality of the interaction that is important; always let the young person lead the interactions and follow their lead.
- Respond to the young person’s actions or vocalisations as if they are intentional communications, even if they aren’t.
- Establish mutual pleasure! Make every Intensive Interaction engagement enjoyable; there is no external reward offered or given, just the mutual pleasure of being with a person.
- Be aware of your body position, for example, are you in a position that allows for eye-contact?
- Allocate time for a parent, carer or staff member to be with the learning disability assistant (for example, 1 hour). By the last few sessions, parents, carers or staff members should be leading the session, rather than the learning disability assistant. Guidance will be provided.
If the young person is unable to attend the intensive interaction session, please email the team in advance. Unfortunately, if 3 sessions are cancelled, the young person will be removed from the Intensive Interaction intervention.
