Thanks to everyone who came to my presentation at the 2012 RCSLT conference ‘Driving Transformation’ I was fortunate to have the new chair of RCSLT Bryony Simpson chairing my workshop and the room was full with over 50 delegates attending.  I told the story of our spin out from the university using a Talking Mat reflecting on the skills we had developed in various  areas e.g. financial planning, intellectual property, marketing , leadership – using the Talking Mat worked well and was a visual and interesting way to discuss business planning! The participants reflected on their own business skills in groups using Talking Mats and this generated discussion about e.g. the value of the mats as a thinking and planning  tool, the challenges of intellectual property, how much risk you take in planning a new venture and what are the most helpful stepping stones – great buzz all around the room and lots of lovely comments

Getting it right for every child is a national programme to improve outcomes for all children and young people in Scotland. It threads through all existing policy, practice, strategy and legislation. New Scottish Government legislation will be introduced to parliament in 2013 which will embrace the key principles of the GIRFEC approach to all of children’s services.

Yesterday (3rd September 2012) Leanne Turner and I attended an excellent conference at Stirling University where a wide range of people explored key aspects of implementing the GIRFEC approach. (Leeanne is Employee Development Officer: Child Protection with Edinburgh Council and one of our accredited trainers)

Talking Mats and GIRFEC: Leeanne and I ran 2 seminars which described how we have worked together to develop symbol sets based on the GIRFEC model to be used with the Talking Mats Framework. We illustrated the seminar with some moving case examples of how Talking Mats has been used to get the views of children at risk. We also discussed plans for future Talking Mats developments and training.

To read one of Leeanne’s case studies click here

We have also had an article published in the Times Educational Supplement (Scotland) about talking Mats being used to help young people set their own targets – click here to download it

The final report for the project funded by the Scottish Government has been approved. This project increased the reach of the accessible communication workshop designed in 2011. The workshop aimed to raise awareness amongst people with Communication Support Needs (CSN) of their rights under the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 and to support them to understand and use the Act.  The project started in January 2012 and 51 people were trained as workshop leaders and by the end of July 20 workshops were run for people with communication support needs. The workshops proved valuable in terms of raising awareness of and understanding of issues of support and protection. Comments from participants attending included

‘Many things were covered which I did not know. I feel much more comfortable with dealing with any problems if they arise.’

‘My neighbour makes me feel unsafe and I know something can be done about it now’

‘finding out that there is no dead end that you can be helped’

A workshop leader commented

‘The sense of well-being and self-worth that most participants have described once they have understood the information about ASP is invaluable’

The incidence of disclosure was high in 8 of the 20 groups run an issue was raised which caused concern and required further investigation. Given that it is recognized that people with CSN have an increased risk of vulnerability then maybe these figures are not surprising. It emphasises the importance of the workshop to give an opportunity for people to reflect on their lives and have the confidence to report any issues of concern or potential harm.

If you want to read the full report click here 

Several groups discussed ideas of extending the reach of Talking Mats at our seminar day in June. Here are the main themes which emerged from the group thinking about non-traditional settings:

Using Talking Mats with people with mental health issues

• To build trust and relationships as Talking Mats has been proven to improve engagement
• Helps clients to ‘open up’ as it avoids direct confrontation but is also person centred
• The interviewer could do a mat on themselves to illustrate how to use it

Using Talking Mats with people with no obvious communication or cognitive difficulties

• An interview and appraisal tool with staff
• University students use it to see and reflect on their own issues and then create an action plan
• It’s being used with expectant couples to use pre-birth to discuss expectations and post-birth to help them come to terms with any issues
• Using Talking Mats with groups
• 1 large mat using sets of large symbols – the group comes to an agreementabout where each symbol should go
• Each member of a group has their own mat and their own set of symbols.Symbols can be displayed 1 at a time using Powerpoint to explain to group and participants can build up their own mat and discuss. This is helpful if time is limited
• Very useful for focus groups where people can see others’ points of view

Using Talking Mats with people with visual impairment

• Symbols van be enlarged and printed on yellow background (avoid green)
• Arial 16 point font for text
• Braille version
• Different Textured mats or boxes for ‘top scale’
• Verbal prompts

A theme from our Seminar: Using Talking Mats in research and evaluation

The 4 main discussions which emerged from this theme were:

1.How to evaluate the effectiveness of Talking Mats – this has been done in several projects which are listed on the Talking Mats website as well as by other researchers
2.Using Talking Mats to evaluate the progress of individuals by using Talking Mats to measure their goals before and after intervention
3.Using Talking Mats to evaluate whole services by adapting questionnaires to be used in the Talking Mats format of main topics and options – e.g. making Care Inspectorate questionnaires accessible
4.Getting group feedback to evaluate an event such as the benefit of a training course or seminar

We had a very enjoyable and stimulating day yesterday at our Talking Mats seminar whose theme was ‘Extending the Reach and Use of Talking Mats’. We had 40 participants from throughout the UK and beyond who are all trained in the use of Talking Mats and were delighted that 5 colleagues from Sweden joined us.

The Open Space format of the day allowed plenty of time for connections, discussion, exchange of ideas, learning and laughter.

The participants came up with 8 main themes – four discussed in the morning:
•How do we extend the reach of Talking Mats in the assessment process?
•How do we extend the reach of Talking Mats with families and other key players?
•How do we vary the top scale?
•How do we extend the reach of Talking Mats in non-traditional settings

– and in the afternoon:
•Using Talking Mats in research and evaluation
•How can Talking Mats be used in child and adult protection?
•What would family Talking Mats training look like?
•Accredited trainers sharing time

We promise to put the summary from each theme on the blog over the next few weeks!

We finished the day with a lovely meal and more chat…

On 12th June The Scottish Government published:

A Right to Speak: Supporting Individuals who use Alternative and Augmentative Communication

The report provides guidance to be used by people who use Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC), their families, strategic and operational heads within health boards, local authority social work and education departments and the voluntary sector.

At its launch Kim Hartley,the Scotland Officer for the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists welcomed the report and the £4million pounds which Michael Mathieson, the Minister for Public Health, announced would be available to support the recommendations in the document.

We were also pleased to see that Talking Mats was referenced several times in the report as an example of good practice.

The report can be found at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/06/8416

We are delighted to have won the Regional Student Employer of the Year award (SEOTY) for Scotland and Northern Ireland. We will now go foward to the National Awards and will hear the results of this on 18th June.

Many thanks to Anne Marie, our intern, for her nomination – its been great working with her.

7th June: Jane is presenting at the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care Conference in Glasgow
13, 14,15th June: We have a stand at the National OT Conference at the SECC in Glasgow
14th June: Joan is training in Dublin
15th June: Jane and Margo are running 2nd part of rolling training in Stirling
15th June:  Advisory Group
18th June: TALKING MATS SEMINAR
21st June: Lois is training staff at South Lanarkshire College
25th June: Lois and Sally are running the 2nd part of training in Falkirk
26th June: Lois is training in Birmingham
28th June: Joan is training in London

At our recent accredited training Anne Lafferty form the Advocacy Project Glasgow described how she used Talking Mats in a group setting. She had been asked to work with a group of adults with mental health difficulties who lived together in a house but found it a challenge to relate to each other. She decided to use Talking Mats with a data projector plus lots of paper and glue . The topic was what activities they were interested in participating in and what Anne did was project each symbol one at a time onto the screen and then everyone placed their own  symbol onto their own paper Mat. She said this worked really well, the image of the symbol projected onto the wall held the groups attention but everyone had their chance to express and then share their views. Apparently the staff were amazed and really pleased about how well the tenants participated, stayed and listened to each other. Thought it worth sharing this easy and creative way to use Talking Mats in a group setting – thanks for the idea Anne