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Attending one of our standard training courses will:
- Provide you with a range of practical tools and models that will help you evaluate a person’s ability and their level of support required
- Give you a holistic framework to support people with communication disability
- Build your confidence in using Talking Mats
- Encourage your creativity in using and applying Talking Mats in different situations such as goal setting, sharing views, supporting disclosure, enabling decision making…..the list is endless!
You can either
- Book places on our regular courses held in different venues across the UK
- Book a bespoke training for your organisation
- Participate in our 12 week online training course
However, you cannot train others unless you have completed and passed one of our residential ‘train the trainers’ courses. We put significant emphasis on our accredited training because without it, the quality and integrity of the Talking Mats framework is diluted and damaged.Talking Mats is based on extensive research and although it may appear simple, there are many complex layers involved in using it and we need to be confident that trainers have an in depth knowledge and understanding of these.
In order to apply to become a Talking Mats trainer you have to have completed the standard training (above), be experienced in using Talking Mats and fulfil the course requirements.
Intellectual Property
Talking Mats was originally developed at University of Stirling and the Intellectual Property is held by the University and Talking Mats Limited is assigned the sole rights to Talking Mats. Talking Mats is registered as a trademark. Only training that is sanctioned by us is recognised and anyone training others without being a recognized Talking Mats trainer is infringing Intellectual Property and copyright.
Signposting and sharing knowledge
We are of course delighted when people share their knowledge and experience of Talking Mats and signpost others to the website and resources.
Theme 1 from Talking Mats Seminar: How do we vary the top scale?
One of the key skills in using Talking Mats is getting the top scale to reflect the question that you are asking and to be consistent.
WRITE IT DOWN SO YOU CAN STICK TO IT!
The following range of 3 point top scales have been suggested:
like – unsure – dislike
managing – need some help – not managing
very important – quite important – not important
really good at – getting better at – not good at
want – sometimes want – don’t want
calm – unsure – anxious
can do it myself – need a little help – need a lot of help
very easy – quite easy – hard
It was suggested that a way of dealing with a negative topic such as ‘anxiety’ or ‘pain’ was to use a quantitative top scale such as:
a little – some – a lot
Or you could ask what strategies make your pain
better – stays the same – worse
In some situations where the person has an acquired disability, it may be best to do 2 mats, one about liking and another about managing. It was suggested that adapting the mid point to reflect potential loss of skills might be useful:
like – like but can’t do it now – don’t like it
More recently we have found that the following wording works very well for lots of people and situations:
going well – sometimes – not going well
