What an amazing day we had celebrating 21 years since the first article about Talking Mats was published in August 1998 in the Communication Matters journal. Over 180 people attended from so many different walks of life. We are grateful to them all for coming and helping us mark the occasion. We are also grateful to the endowment fund of Forth Valley NHS for helping us fund the event.

In the morning thanks to a fantastic group of speakers we discussed a diverse range of topics:

• Rachel Woolcomb, our OT associate explored how she sees Talking Mats as an ‘energy efficient’ thinking tool and outlined how it supports people to think through issues Talking Mats as a Thinking Tool
• Two teachers, Fiona Graham and Claire Forgan examined the benefits and challenges of embedding Talking Mats in school to encourage and extend pupil participation
• Susan Gowland, a speech and language therapist discussed the use of Talking Mats in a forensic setting illustrating from a case example how Talking Mats helped staff see that incidents do not come out of the blue. When they looked at the pattern of mats over time they could see when the patient was expressing concern about small things. This was an indication that bigger things were going on for him.
• Sally Boa the Research Manager for Strathcarron Hospice led on how Talking Mats was a way to enable ‘end of life’ conversations, things that can be hard for any of us to talk about. The mats give a safe space and structure to enable these conversations to take place. Talking Mats and Palliative care
• Two parents Tracey Campbell and Sarah Robertson spoke about their experience with using Talking Mats with their children. Sarah said ‘Talking Mats gives us a happier home. It helps me be patient, listen and give power to him’ (her son). Talking Mat A Parents View 15.08.19
• Jill Bradshaw of the Tizard Centre, University of Kent outlined her research including her work exploring Talking Mats as a tool to sit beside functional analysis of behaviour where the person’s own view of what challenges and helps them is often overlooked and not included fully. TM and PBS final version for handout
• Anne Lafferty of The Advocacy Project , give a powerful example of using Talking Mats in a legal setting. This important work is in need of funding so we can explore this more fully. Everyone also got to play legislation bingo!  Talking Mats and Supported Decision Making PP 2
•  Liz Taylor (Talking Mats licensed trainer) and Lynnette Linton (Talking mats co-trainer) from The Action Group shared their experience in a fantastic film.  They used a Talking Mat to reflect on the experience and would recommend co-training as an effective way to deliver the Foundation course.
• Brian Robertson and Paddy Carstairs described how they developed a Talking Mats to allow members of the National Involvement Network to explore with other people with a learning disability how The Charter for Involvement related to their life experience.This is an empowering way of using Talking Mats that shows that people who get support can help change and improve the support of other supported people.This is an empowering way of using Talking Mats that shows that people who get support can help change and improve the support of other supported people.
• Rosie Noyce from Pennine Care NHS described a whole team approach to supporting Healthy Young Minds and how they have embedded Talking Mats into their care pathway. She cited powerful case examples of impact and a real commitment by the team to hear the voices of young people  Talking Mats and Young People’s Mental Health

And that was just the morning! Lots of delegates have asked for copies of the presentations so watch this space

The afternoon demonstrated just how far Talking Mats has come through its partnerships with other organisations. We are so grateful to all the people who came and had stalls and engaged with our networking activities! There was a real buzz in the room as people explored the variety of ways in which Talking Mats is used to support and enable more effective communication. Lots of connections were being made, people thinking about new ways of working and applying Talking Mats in their settings. People enjoyed seeing old friends but was good to see new networks were being built.

So, thank you Care Opinion, Turning Point Scotland, The Action Group, Capability Scotland, The CALL Centre, The Indigo Group, The National Involvement Network, Forth Valley NHS, The Stirling University Careers Service and Alzheimer Scotland. In addition, Talking Mats had a stand with all its products. Also, to promote our Birthday offer since we are 21, we have a 2 for 1 offer on resources for 21 days so order quickly. It ends on the 5^th of September!

Today was also the day that Joan marked her ‘retirement’. She gave a very moving speech that celebrated her distinguished career and her very significant achievements. She leaves an amazing legacy in the Talking Mats framework and with all the energy in the room we are sure it will continue to grow and develop. Thank you, Joan.

At Talking Mats, we offer a range of training models https://www.talkingmats.com/training/ that are tailored to suit individual teams and/or organisations and that help them develop their services to people with communication disability.

The one which best supports participants to embed Talking Mats in their practice /organisation is the Enhanced Talking Mats training https://www.talkingmats.com/training/bespoke-training-for-organisations/. This course is run over 2 days with the second day usually 4 months later supporting staff reflect, refresh and extend the implementation of Talking Mats with their clients. It includes an evaluation of the participants’ views of their interaction with ‘thinkers’ before and after the Talking Mats training. Participants are asked to complete a short questionnaire designed by the Talking Mats team on Survey Monkey prior to the first training day.

In November 2018 Joan Murphy ran the first day of an enhanced course in Welshpool, North Powys for 12 NHS staff including (Click to enlarge):

Over the next few months participants were asked to use Talking Mats and bring case studies to the follow up day. They were also asked to complete the survey before the second day which was held in March 2019.

The following graphs show the comparison of the pre- and post- training evaluations. (Double click to enlarge the figures):

Figure 1 Pre talking Mats training – November 2018

Figure 2 Post Talking Mats training – March 2019

In addition, participants were asked to add any comments. Here are a sample of them:

It allowed me to identify areas that mattered most to the person in terms of what they wanted to work on in therapy. It showed me that what I thought was the most severe aspect wasn’t always what was having the biggest impact. 

• Now have understanding of hobbies/likes to interact with on the ward to engage in therapy and reduce anxiety/boredom. 
• Brought up something important to them which probably would not have surfaced without TM. 
• Used to make patient-centred goals as opposed to goals set with family therapist. 

In conclusion, if any organisations are looking for Talking Mats training, we would encourage them to consider booking the enhanced course to support them to use Talking Mats to its best effect.

Our Talking Mats is 21 Event is in Stirling on Thursday 15th August 2019.  Thanks to funding from NHS Forth Valley endowment committee the event is free but you do need to book your space https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/talking-mats-is-21-tickets-62362171935

You can come to the morning only, afternoon only or come for the whole day.

If you can’t come to our event watch out for out blogs and social media celebrating the reach of Talking Mats for 21 days before the 15^th of August.  Please join in with your contributions using the hashtag #TMis21. For 21 days after our event we will be having a special Birthday offer! Watch this space, more to follow …….

Many thanks to Jenny Trott for our new guest blog about her interview with Talking Mats Director, Lois Cameron – Jenny’s video provides some great information about the Talking Mats approach and our original and digital resources:

A year ago I started my YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/jennytrott) as a way of supporting parents and carers with information and inspiration. As a parent of a disabled child myself I knew that one of the best ways to find out things is from other parents, and YouTube was just a different and new way to do that. To date I have published nearly 50 films about subjects ranging from Self Directed Support to Rebound therapy, and including interviews with parents, professionals and disabled people.

Quite early on I knew that I wanted to make a film about Talking Mats. I had used Talking Mats when I worked with people living with dementia, and I knew that my son’s school were using them too. I had seen the benefits of this innovative communication tool but I also knew that many parents and carers didn’t really understand it because they hadn’t been given the right information.

Lois was kind enough to agree to join me in front of the camera, so in April I visited Talking Mats in Stirling with my tripods, microphones and cameras. It can be a bit daunting interviewing someone I’ve not met before but Lois instantly put me at ease and had the great idea of demonstrating a Mat rather than just talking about it. It was so interesting, experiencing using a Mat first hand and it helped to show the viewers what Talking Mats is really about.

You can view the video here: https://youtu.be/Fmyt1fE-_U8

The feedback from the film has been great, both from professionals, parent carers and SLT students; lots of lightbulb moments; “ah, now I get it”!

I am still making films but less frequently as I am now also setting up a social enterprise, Mecoco (www.mecoco.org) here in North Ayrshire.  We’ll be offering work experience and volunteering opportunities to disabled people to work alongside us making candles and melts. I am sure Talking Mats will be invaluable in our workshop!

If you’d like to find out more about accessing Talking Mats training take a look here- https://www.talkingmats.com/training/  – we offer a range of options including online, and bespoke training for organisations, as well as advanced courses and specialist seminars for those who have already accessed Talking Mats Foundation Training.

We are all looking forward to celebrating Talking Mats is 21 on the 15^th August

The morning is aimed at people who are experienced Talking Mats practitioners and will extend thinking and Talking Mats practice. There are an interesting range of parallel sessions to choose from. Each participant will get to choose three topics to attend.

• Talking Mats as a Thinking Tool
• Embedding Talking Mats in Schools
• Talking Mats in Forensic Settings
• Talking Mats in End of Life Care
• My experience of using Talking Mats as a parent
• Talking Mats and Positive behaviour Support
• Talking Mats and Supported Decision- Making
• Empowering people with Learning Disabilities to be Talking Mats Listeners and Trainers
• Talking Mats and Children’s Mental Health

The afternoon is more informal and there will be an opportunity to engage with some of our partners – see how they use Talking Mats and try things out . There will be posters on the use of Talking Mats in lots of different places and for a wide range of applications.

Plus there will be lunch, cake and a few bubbles !

Thanks to funding from NHS Forth Valley endowment committee the event is free but you do need to book your space https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/talking-mats-is-21-tickets-62362171935

You can come to the morning only, afternoon only or come for the whole day.

If you can’t come to our event watch out for out blogs and social media celebrating the reach of Talking Mats for 21 days before the 15^th of August .Please join in with your contributions using the hashtag #TMis21. For 21 days after our event we will be having a special Birthday offer! Watch this space, more to follow …….

Many thanks to Joan Murphy, our Talking Mats Founder, for this great blog sharing Jeppe Forchhammer’s thoughts about the importance of social communication – communicating ‘offline’  – for AAC users:

I met Jeppe Forchhammer at the 2019 ISAAC Conference in Denmark. We had an interesting conversation about the importance of social communication for AAC users and he kindly sent me this presentation and gave me permission to write a blog about his views.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EnX559_lRSa7DeGpb0YHwni2cIjjyjF1XN-I-71-hW4/present?ueb=true&slide=id.p

Here are a few quotes from Jeppe but it is well worth reading his whole presentation

We have reached a time where communication systems become more and more electronic. I have noticed that children who need AAC ie augmented and alternative communication are starting more and more early. This I would like to question! In this lecture I will try to explain, why I think it is better to teach the children to use their body first. In order first to get direct communication relation to another person.

I think it is most important for an AAC user first to learn to interact with another person face to face. This is of course important for all infants in particular if they don’t have a spoken language. I think the eyes begins naturally to take over and the baby begin to communicate. At least I began to observe what happened around me using my eyes by watching things around me. In this way I began early to take contact with people around me.

I am afraid that AAC users in the future will lose some of their abilities to communicate with their body or facial expression. Especially if one starts too early. I think there is a risk that the child get blinkers and we have the risk that the child will be introvert. This might give the child some social problems if it doesn´t learn to use and read the body.

We must remember that a good relation is created face to face and not through a Speech Generating Device.

If they only communicate through their speech generating computer they may miss the face to face communication.

Many thanks to Jeppe for his thoughtful and stimulating comments.

If you would like to contact him, please email jeppeforchhammer@gmail.com

The importance of social and non-verbal communication is highlighted in our Talking Mats training courses.  If you are interested in accessing this training take a look at our options here – https://www.talkingmats.com/training/

In this latest blog, our Talking Mats OT Associate, Rachel Woolcomb tells us how Talking Mats can support delivery of Personalised Care:

“Person centred practice”, and “partnership approach” are common phrases heard in health and social care settings but what does this really mean in practice?

How good are we at ensuring our service users are truly heard, and given opportunities to talk about what is important to them?

Recently NHS England set out their ambitions for the delivery of personalised care. This is a commitment to enabling people to have the same choice and control over their mental and physical health that they have come to expect in every other part of their life.

This however requires a shift in culture.

One of the cornerstones of personalised care is shared decision making. This is a collaborative process in which people are supported to understand the options available to them including the various risks, benefits and consequences. A shared decision will have acknowledged personal preferences, circumstances, values and beliefs. This ensures that when a choice is made it is fully informed.

There is substantial literature which demonstrates the usefulness of goal setting as part of the communication and decision making process.

A well written person-centred goal will describe the anticipated achievement of a specific activity. It will be meaningful and help create a common vision within the rehabilitation process.

Talking Mats is an ideal tool to help facilitate these processes. They enable better conversations and provide an interactive thinking space. They have also been demonstrated to be a useful tool in enabling people to think about their rehabilitation goals.

Read more about this in the TMOT Resource 2: How Talking Mats can help facilitate shared decision making and goal setting: Goal setting TMOT 2

If you would like to find out more about the different Talking Mats training options we offer, take a look here:  https://www.talkingmats.com/training/

In this latest blog, Laura Holmes (Talking Mats Associate based in Stockport) shares a great example of how Talking Mats can be used by education staff to help children to share their thoughts and feelings:

One of Teaching Assistants I work with at Woodley Primary School in Stockport, Lucie Porteus, attended Talking Mats Foundation Training in December 2018. Since then Lucie has been using Talking Mats with many of the children on our Speech and Language Therapy caseload in school.

Lucie’s use of Talking Mats with a group of Year 6 children is a great example of the benefits of using Talking Mats to help children to share their views and opinions. Lucie had carried out initial Talking Mats sessions with four children, on a one-to-one basis. These sessions had focused on getting a general idea of each child’s thoughts and feelings using the Talking Mats ‘Consulting Children and Young People’ resources. A common theme had emerged through use of ‘blanks’ – all four children wanted to talk more about their upcoming school residential trip.  Here is a picture of one of the mats (click on the picture for a clearer view):

Lucie then planned and prepared options to ‘sub-mat’ the topic ‘PGL’ – the residential school trip, and chose the topline questions ‘happy about/not sure/ not happy about’. She then met with each child individually to complete the mats. Some of the issues/ questions which emerged from the mats were:

• ‘I don’t know who the people there are’/ meeting new people
• ‘I don’t know what we will be doing’
• ‘Do we have a choice about what activities we can or can’t do?’/ ‘I’d like to have a choice’.
• Privacy – getting dressed
• Will any instructions be written down – do we just listen or will we be shown what to do?
• The instructions might be confusing – what will I do?
• I don’t like heights – I’m worried about climbing up high
• Working in groups – we might all fall out
• Sleeping – it might be hard to get to sleep. Sometimes other children talk and I can’t get to sleep.
• What will the food be like?
• What happens if I don’t feel well?
• The journey – I might feel sick if I’m not at the front of the coach/ Do we get to choose who we sit with?

This information was passed on to each child’s Class Teacher and Teaching Assistant. Further conversations then took place to answer/address the above queries and concerns. Using Talking Mats meant that these conversations were personalised and focused. The children’s queries/concerns were listened and responded to well before the school trip itself.

School staff report that all the children had a fantastic time on their school trip!

Talking Mats enabled these children to have their voices heard about a topic which was really important to them. If you are interested in finding out more about accessing training to enable you to support the children and young people you work with to have their voices heard, take a look at our training options here: https://www.talkingmats.com/training/

Many thanks to Tina Wood, Occupational Therapist at Therapy In Motion, for this great example of how Talking Mats can be used to explore thoughts and feelings both in present-day and in retrospect, to evidence positive outcomes from a change in educational placement. Tina’s use of colour coding and pie charts really helps to illustrate this.

Tina attended our Talking Mats Foundation training back in September 2016 and since then she has been using Talking Mats regularly in her work as an Independent Occupational Therapist.

In this example, Tina has used Talking Mats to enable Ben (name changed for anonymity, age 12½ years) to share his thoughts and feelings using the Talking Mats ‘Consulting Children and Young People’ resource packs – focusing on the topics ‘My Body and Skills’ and ‘What I do and Support’.

At the time of this Talking Mat, Ben had been accessing a new placement at a Pupil Referral Unit for the past 11 months (click on the picture below to see a clearer version).

As there was clearly a difference in how Ben felt things were going when he was attending his previous school, Tina decided to ask him to do a retrospective Talking Mat of how things were going for him 11 months ago in January 2018, when he started to feel “unwell”.

This enabled comparison with how he feels now in the “safe setting” of the Pupil Referral unit (click on picture to see a clearer version).

Tina then compiled the information from the above tables into pie charts, enabling a clear visual comparison between the two times/situations (click on picture to see a clearer version):

As can be seen from these charts, there had been a huge change in Ben’s perception of how he is coping with life in general and school in particular.

Tina recommended that this information needs to be considered along with the rest of Ben’s sensory needs (as reported in her full OT report) when deciding on what is the best educational setting for him after leaving the pupil referral unit.

We love this use of colour coding and pie charts to illustrate the information from Ben’s Talking Mats – to really ensure that Ben’s feelings and thoughts are seen and heard.

 If you would like to know more about accessing Talking Mats training – available across the UK and Ireland as well as online – please take a look here: https://www.talkingmats.com/training/

 If you have any examples of how you report/share information about completed Talking Mats we would be interested to hear about it! Just email laura@talkingmats.com

In this latest blog, our Director, Lois Cameron describes the initial stage of a Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory project aimed at enabling involvement and engagement of people with learning disabilities in supporting people with learning disabilities to have a voice. A great example of co-production in action:

Background

The Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory aims to generate evidence, build understanding and provide information on the causes of poor health and health inequalities experienced by people with learning disabilities in Scotland. However, they recognised that there was a need to develop their approach to involving people with learning disabilities. They considered whether a citizens’ jury for people with learning disabilities on health and health research would be a constructive way of engaging people with learning disabilities in supporting people with learning disabilities to have a voice. From the outset, they acknowledged that communication would be a key challenge and approached Talking Mats to work with them to put forward a bid to the Welcome Trust Public engagement fund. This bid was written, submitted and was successful.

To establish the project, our first task was to recruit a Public Engagement Lead to take the lead on project delivery. This raised the first hurdle, as since the Engagement Lead was not in post there was no citizen’s jury and therefore no pool of people with learning disabilities to approach to be involved in the interview panel. From the outset, involvement of people with learning disability was seen as central to the project. Talking Mats had recently completed a course working with people with learning disabilities from the National Involvement Network to become Talking Mats interviewers, so we approached one of the participants who had completed the course and asked if he would be willing to be on the interview panel. He was very happy to take part and contribute his skills and experience to the interview panel.

Planning the interview Talking Mat

We examined the job description and divided it into questions that were more factual and knowledge-based and those that we might describe as ‘softer’. However, calling them soft might be misleading as they were actually value based and we felt that the successful candidate’s proficiency and self-awareness in responding to these options would be central to the success of the project. After going through this sifting process we came up with 8 possible options for the interview talking mat. We met with our interviewer from the National Involvement Network and with him honed it down to six and choose the top scale: extremely confident, confident, not that confident. He also choose the symbols he wanted to use. Candidates would be asked to justify where they placed their options. A script was developed to support the interviewer e.g. ‘It would be good if when you placed the card down you gave us a reason why you placed it there. Examples from other work you have done would be helpful’ .   The full script can be found here – Interview Script

The six options were:

1. Making information accessible
2. Making sure everyone has a chance to speak
3. Helping the group understand research
4. Helping the group set its goals
5. Involving people with severe learning disabilities in the research agenda
6. Not taking power away from the group

The interview

In the interview, candidates were asked to give a short presentation, and then the member of the National Involvement Network carried out the Talking Mat. After this, there were some further panel questions and a chance for the candidate to ask questions.

The experience and outcomes

“I really liked being involved in making the mat. At the interview I knew what I had to do and I felt the other interviewers listened to me and my opinion.”

Other panel member’s perspective

“Having never used a Talking Mat in a recruitment interview before I was not sure how effective it would be as a recruitment tool. We wanted the process to be as inclusive as possible, where all interviewers had a clear and purposeful role. The Talking Mat worked really well, both as a way of gathering knowledge and information from the candidates, but also by providing an opportunity to observe the interactions between the candidate and the interviewer. I also think that the structured framework of the Talking Mat put the interviewer at ease and it was nice to observe that his confidence in using it in this context and, where necessary, in prompting and supporting the interviewee. All in all this was an effective way of conducting an inclusive interview process that signalled to our candidates that people with learning disabilities should be involved meaningfully in all stages of the process. It also meant that when we came to reviewing the candidates against the role criteria all members of the panel were able to contribute. I can’t wait to do more interviews like this!”

Candidate perspective:

“For me, an interview process is really about making sure that you and your potential new employer have compatible values. Therefore, it was a relief to have someone with learning disabilities on the interview panel who could help direct the questions. It was also clear that the interviewer knew how he fit into the interview process and was taking the lead on his section of the interview.

The Talking Mat itself was an interesting tool for the interview discussion because the top scale allowed me to look at where my skills and confidence were but also identify some potential challenges within the project. The interviewer also really kept me on my toes with some good follow up questions. In one in particular, he asked me what I would do if he was talking too much and dominating the conversation in the group. It was a challenging question and quite uncomfortable on the spot, but it forced me to be honest about my own values and say that actually, the right thing to do is to politely confront someone who is not letting others speak.

The benefit of a Talking Mat is that it has to be really clear and concrete to work, so I actually felt that I understood the demands of the role better than reading the much longer job description.”

Summary

The involvement of people with learning disabilities was possible from the start of the project because we were able to harness the skills and experience of a person from the National Involvement Network who was trained in Talking Mats. He had a clear independent role which was central to the interview process and improved the quality of the information gained by panel members . The Talking Mats design gave all panel members particular insight into those ‘soft skills’ that were felt to be crucial to the project and that might not have come through so clearly if just the traditional presentation and questions were used.

If you are thinking about a Talking Mats project for your own organisation/service you can find more information here:  https://www.talkingmats.com/projects/

Rachel Woolcomb, our Talking Mats OT Associate, tells us about the recent Royal College of Occupational Therapists’ Report and considers the ways Talking Mats can support:

The Royal College of Occupational Therapists have recently published a new report. “Making personalised care a reality: The role of occupational therapy.”

As the OT Associate for Talking Mats, I took the opportunity to review the document and consider how Talking Mats can help OT’s in fulfilling the recommendations made.

The report recognises that people living with long-term conditions bring different and equally important, knowledge and expertise to the decision –making process.

It challenges OT’s to ensure that they really listen to, and hear the views of the people they work with.

A Talking Mat can help facilitate this. It helps people to understand what is being discussed, to reflect and organise their thoughts, to say what matters most to them and record their views. It helps OT’s to really listen, to learn new information, to involve the person in their own planning and support decision making.

Read more about how Talking Mats can help OT’s to make personalised care a reality in the TMOT Resource 1:  TM Personalised Care – Copy.

The RCOT report is available here: https://www.rcot.co.uk/news/delivering-personalised-care-frontline

Rachel would love to hear from you if you have any examples of how Talking Mats have helped you to provide personalised care, or if you want to know more about OT and Talking Mats. Her email is: Rachel@talkingmats.com.

If you are feeling inspired and would like to find out about accessing Talking Mats Foundation Training, take a look at our upcoming courses across the UK, as well as online and organisational training options: https://www.talkingmats.com/training/