Organisational skills and building independence

Organisational skills refer to the ability to organise and prioritise daily activities while managing time effectively. These are essential skills for learning, however, skills that some autistic individuals may find challenging, which can impact their ability to achieve independence in daily living tasks.

In this blog, we’ll look at different ways to support learners in developing their organisational skills and increasing their independence.

Importance of organisational skills and independence

While organisation and independence are often considered soft skills and difficult to measure, they are just as important as hard skills. Hard skills generally refer to the technical skills required for a specific task. For example, buttering toast requires the fine motor skill of holding the knife and applying the right amount of pressure to scrape the butter across the bread without ripping it. The ‘soft skill’ in this example would be being able to work methodically, being able to attend to the task, and persevering when faced with hurdles. Being organised is a crucial transferable skill not only for academic success but also for life, as it is essential for play, communication, social interaction, personal management, and performing academic tasks. Children need to learn to take responsibility for themselves and their belongings to effectively carry out practical tasks such as dressing and feeding themselves.

If a child has difficulties with organisation, they might find it challenging to:

• Organise themselves and their belongings
• Follow instructions – verbal or visual
• Prepare for the school day
• Identify the right tools for an activity/job
• Organise speech pace (slow and fast) and effectively structure sentences
• Perform practical tasks such as dressing and feeding
• Learn new skills because this requires engaging in unrehearsed actions that may feel uncomfortable / unfamiliar

Internal organisation

Successful organisation as a soft skill involves a child’s ability to arrange both their body and their environment simultaneously. For instance, in a classroom, a child motor plans and coordinates their movements to position themselves correctly on a chair while organising their books and pens on the table in front of them ready for learning.

As well as motor planning skills it’s essential to integrate and organise sensory input. Sensory integration refers to our ability to effectively receive, process, organise, and effectively interpret sensory information. Sensory organising activities help to focus the brain on learning as they require planning and performing actions in a sequence. The individual needs to organise their body, plan their approach and do more than one thing at a time. Organising activities could include climbing, hopping, balancing, and throwing.

Independence across ages:

Communication

Communication plays an important role in the skill of self-organising and independence. For example, the ability to share a decision or choice that’s been made with others as well as being able to follow instructions essential for the task.
Examples, such as following a Now, Next and Then board and low-demand visual timetables are typically introduced for ages 0-10. This could be graded to a more complex 6-step visual ages 10-19 and further still at 19+ where the focus shifts to being able to communicate socially, navigate community settings and activity planning. Find out more about visual timetables here.

Sensory and physical needs

The physicality of navigating the demands of a task independently will look different for every child and young person – however being aware of the body’s positioning, its structure and limitations throughout childhood, puberty and adulthood is important.
The ability of a young person to recognise, respond and adapt to the information they receive from the environment while completing a task is crucial to their performance. In addition to this, using strategies to prepare for a chosen task is equally necessary. Knowing how to select a sensory activity, like a short burst of jumping jacks, deep pressure applied using a body sock before a long commute to school or a calming activity, like, listening to music, drawing or deep breathing exercises before bedtime are all skills that support independence and organisation.

Executive functioning

Executive functioning refers to the mental skills that allow us to manage every aspect of our lives! They allow us to: manage day-to-day tasks, stay safe and include self-restraint, working memory, emotion control, focus, task initiation, planning/prioritisation, organization, time management, defining and achieving goals, flexibility, observation, and stress tolerance. These skills are the building blocks for independence and organisation. Research suggests that up to 80% of autistic people have challenges with executive functioning skills, leading to difficulties managing time, and completing daily living tasks.

How can we support

• Using visual tools and organising the environment can be useful in improving the organisational skills of autistic children. This could be visual timetables, labelling tools and organising containers based on their content.
• Breaking tasks down into smaller and more manageable chunks and giving simple instructions.
• Physical and mental preparation for tasks such as engaging in wellbeing tasks prior to demanding activities, to prep the mind for the tasks ahead.
• Aids to memory and visual cues. Using images or social stories to help foster expectancy and provide structure and organisation.
• Simple, age-appropriate time management. Learning the concepts of time and using timers and diaries effectively.
• Working with parents and schools to ensure that the right approaches to developing organisation and independence skills are being transferred in different settings.

Independence in education

The school environment is where children and young people can learn the skills necessary for independent learning. At this point, it’s important to highlight that error is learning, and making errors and getting corrective feedback is a beneficial way of learning.

• Scaffolding – a common technique used in developmental practices and teaching. It involves providing support to your child by offering just the right amount of assistance.
• Forward and backward chaining methods – an instructional strategy based on breaking a task down into small steps and then teaching each step within the sequence by itself.
• Visual supports
• Faded prompts – offering more support when your child is learning a new skill and then gradually fading out steps until they can complete independently
• Creating opportunities to practice skills of independence

Independence at home

This is an area that some families can struggle with – the main problem here is that skills are not so easily transferred.

Some opportunities at home that could help include:

• Using evenings and weekends when there is more time to focus on skills
• Communicate with school settings to provide resources / techniques for independence – this is to ensure consistency between settings.
• Setting clear expectations and modelling behaviours matters. If, for example at school, a child is expected to tidy up after themselves after lunch, we can support this independence at home by expecting the same. Clear and consistent messaging is key.

Top tips

• Develop consistent, realistic routines at home
• Use diaries and visual prompts
• Involve the child in planning their day / week
• Include the child in setting this up e.g. mealtimes, school clothes for the next day
• Stop, Think, Do model – ask questions about how and what they need to complete a task rather than telling them what they need or what they have forgotten.
• Give one direction at a time to avoid information overload
• Check that the child has fully understood what is expected of them
• Practice, practice, practice! And as tempting as it is, don’t take over.

By following these top tips, you are setting your child or young adult up to succeed. Whilst it might not always be a smooth road, supporting them to be as organised as possible in their learning will help them to become more and more independent. For more information on any of the above topics, check out our Lunch and Learn recording below.