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
