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.

We have been asked to show a clip of video of Talking Mats in action.

This clip shows Ian,who had a cerebral haemorrhage when he was 30, using Talking Mats to think about his goals for rehabilitation.

Click here to watch video

We have just received 2000 copies from the printer of the second edition of our book – Talking Mats: A Resource To Enhance Communication. It contains updated information throughout, including a section on our ‘Circles Model’ which is useful as a method of thinking about what affects a person’s ability to engage and interact across the lifespan.

The book also includes some of our new symbols which signify a significant change for Talking Mats. We have commissioned a graphic artist to design and develop a completely new style of symbols specifically for Talking Mats which we believe are attractive and conceptually thoughtful. They are based on the ICF and will be used both as hard copies with all our packages and on the new digital version of Talking Mats which will be available in the summer.

On Monday 22nd February we were delighted to be winners of the Scottish EDGE award 2013 – an exciting new Dragon’s Den style fund which aims to support and encourage entrepreneurial activity in Scotland.

The fund was open to ambitious entrepreneurs looking to set up or grow their businesses, with those demonstrating the most potential winning up to £50,000.

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.

The Talking Mats Team have been funded by the Scottish Government to adapt the CARE Measure to make it accessible for children and to examine if the Paediatric CARE Measure (PCM) can be used to gain the views of children or parents attending AHP services. It is a patient-centred measure of relational empathy. It measures patients’ experiences of the interpersonal aspects of clinical encounters. It is recommended that the PCM is used by all Paediatric Allied Health Professions as standard practice. This should be supported by AHP Child Health Leads and will inform the self-assessment component of recommendation 5.6 in the AHP National Delivery Plan and will be integral in the development of the AHP Children’s Services Plan (Recommendation 4.1).

For information about the research project which was carried out to establish the feasibility, reliability and validity of the PCM please click on the following links:

Paediatric CARE Measure – Phase 2 Final Report

Paediatric CARE measure – Phase 2 Summary

For copies of the AHP guidance, PCM forms and information sheets please click below

Paediatric CARE Measure

Karen did a talking mat with her 5 year old daughter about what she wanted from Santa. She gave her a selection of options and Tamara put the 4 she wanted most under the thumbs up symbol. She put some in the middle and some she didn’t want. However when Karen asked Tamara if she wanted to change anything she had got wise and shifted everything to the thumbs up side!

Don’t think Santa will agree!!

We are delighted that Margo Mackay has joined the Talking Mats Team and will be focusing on extending the work of Talking Mats in education.

She 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.

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.

For a copy of the full report please click here

For a copy of the executive summary please click here

At a recent training someone brought an excellent DVD example of a child with a stammer using Talking Mats. Interestingly, the child was able to chat about her views on school with almost complete fluency. Is there something about using the mat that takes the pressure off direct face to face communication?

Does anyone else have any examples to share?