I want to go on holiday on my own!

At a recent training Jenn Hall who is a Personalisation Development Worker, told the story of her first use of Talking Mats. She used it with a woman that she has known for some time to discuss her views about her going on holiday. The lady is in her forties and has Downs Syndrome.  As she came to the people symbol she looked at it for ages and then placed it in the middle column explaining that she wanted to go on holiday on her own and visit her brother who lives in Spain without her parents. she had never been supported to do this and it was what she really wanted to do.  She also put the food in the middle column explaining that it was hard to understand the menus when she was abroad and that she wanted to learn a few basic words in Spanish. Jenn said that the Talking Mats really enabled the lady to express what she wanted not just go along with the status quo and for those around her to appreciate and understand her views . The Talking Mats has supported discussion with the family to enable this lady’s wish to come true . Hopefully she will have her first successful holiday with her brother visiting him all by herself.

There were 3 trainers from Sweden
Who thought Stirling was a bit like Eden
When Friday at 3 o clock
They got a positive chock
Went home with Scots beer and a Tm agreement

We have great respect for our Swedish trainees who come here do a full 2 day course in English and can then write a Limerick at the end of it . What a great group of trainees we had . Sally and I really enjoyed working with you all

Grandma Murphy’s thoughts

Last Monday I was visiting my mum-in-law who is 95 and has severe dementia. She wasn’t great when I arrived and the staff said she was very tired. It was hard to understand what she was saying and she seemed very frail. For something to do, I showed her some of the new Talking Mats images on my iPad and she perked up and smiled at several of them.

I then took a risk and suggested she might like to use them to tell me what she thinks about herself. I was amazed as she looked carefully at each image, thought about it, made a comment and indicated where she wanted to put it on the ‘mat’. For the first time in ages with me she seemed to be in the present and not in some confused place in her mind

Here are some of her comments:

Getting around – she said she was glad she has a wheel chair to help

Hearing – she said she thought her hearing had got better ( I later discovered she had just got a new hearing aid that morning!)

Feet – sometimes her feet are sore underneath (the staff are going to get the chiropodist to have a look)

Talking – she said it depends who she’s talking to!

Money – said she could always do with more!

The 3 things she was not happy about were – needing help from others, taking her medication and her teeth. (The staff confirmed that she hates taking her medication and have referred her to the dentist).

She loved the pictures and took loads of time thinking about each one and really studied the whole mat at the end.

Her granddaughter Susan said: ‘I thought it was amazing to get a sense of what Grandma is thinking.  This may be silly but I actually felt really moved by it!  It’s so hard to get any sense out of Grandma these days so it was really fascinating to get an insight into her thoughts.’

Talking Mats role in child protection

Here are 3 stories of how Talking Mats has been helpful to staff from Edinburgh Council – Child Protection Team.

Use with parents

N. works with chaotic drug using parents and said “TMs was a turning point – like gold dust – it helped parents identify important issues”.

Involving child in access decisions

A young girl completed two mats the first one about going to mum’s and the second one about going to dad’s. The social worker was then able to explain to the parents how the child felt and TMs allowed the parents to discuss positive ways to unify care. The visual impact of having two differing viewpoints is very powerful.

Use of Talking Mats in children’s panels

L. has trained many Children’s Panel members in Edinburgh and some are now asking social workers if they have used a TM. Using the actual mat rather than a photo was considered to be more beneficial. “it is like the child is present in the room”. An example was given of a young child bringing in her mats about cats. She showed the panel member her mat and it acted as evidence to show the panel that the girl is now able to separate from her mother. Her mother had suffered abuse as a child and she had become over-protective of her daughter. TM increased the child’s participation.

If anyone has used Talking Mats in Child Protection we would love to hear from you.

The following article has just been published:

Murphy, J., & Oliver, T.M. (2013) The use of Talking Mats to support people with dementia and their carers to make decisions together.  Health & Social Care in the Community Health and Social Care in the Community 21(2), 171–180

A resource which has been developed form our research is Talking Mats (bronze) Dementia and Social Care  Click here

For further information please contact info@talkingmats.com This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Involving young people in making decisions that affect their education can be both challenging and time consuming. Margo Mackay has just completed a research project, funded by NHS Forth Valley, which examined whether using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health – Children and Youth Version (ICF-CY) can be usefully combined with Talking Mats to provide a practical framework for decision making and target setting. It tested whether:

1. combining Talking Mats and the ICF-CY framework was acceptable to secondary pupils with complex needs, and
2. using the information obtained from them is helpful in setting targets for their Individual Education Plans

The project found that Talking Mats, when combined with ICF-CY, is a powerful tool with the potential to greatly enhance the nature of partnerships between pupils, parents and professionals.

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

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