Talking Mats is available both as a physical resource and as a digital web-app. In this blog, our Digital Lead, Mark, gives an update on some exciting recent developments on our Digital Talking Mats platform.

It’s been over 2 years since we launched our new Digital Talking Mats platform, and we’re so pleased that more and more of the Talking Mats community continue to discover how it can be used to improve conversations in a wide range of contexts and situations.

We’re always looking for ways to improve the user experience of Digital Talking Mats, and over the last couple of years we have so appreciated the feedback given by Talking Mats customers  who have been using the platform.

This feedback has led to plenty of tweaks and updates behind the scenes, but in this blog I want to highlight some updates we have recently implemented, which we hope will improve the experience for those using our digital platform, and also let you know about what upcoming features are in the pipeline. 

Grouping and Deleting Thinkers

Users can now create groups/categories for their Thinkers, and organise them in a way that is most helpful for their context. Whether it is school classes, hospital wards, or care homes, for example, users can choose what to name the groups, and how many Thinkers are in each group.  

As well as creating Thinker groups, users now have the option to delete any Thinker from their list. This may be a former patient, a Thinker from a previous job, or simply a Thinker that was used to test out the digital platform.

Sharing Personalised Mats

For users who are Talking Mats trained and are part of a Digital Talking Mats Organisational Subscription, we’re excited to say that personalised Mats that have been created can be shared with other members of your organisation. This means that if you work in a specialist department and require a bespoke mat for your context, one member of your department can create a personalised Mat, and share with every member on the subscription.

Upcoming Feature: Private Resources

At Talking Mats, we often do consultancy projects with organisations, to create specialist Resources for specific contexts. Sometimes these Resources end up for sale in our shop, for example, our Funeral Planning, Careers, Work & Employment, and Youth Justice Resources.

In other cases, an organisation may wish to have exclusive access to a Talking Mats Resource produced as part of a consultancy. This is easily achieved with physical resources, but has so far not been possible in the context of the digital platform. With the upcoming private resources feature, we will be able to upload a resource and grant access only to a specific organisation.

At Talking Mats, we are committed to continually developing and improving our digital product for customers. If you have any feedback, or any ideas for improvements we can explore in the future, please get in touch with us at info@talkingmats.com.

If you are interested in Digital Talking Mats for yourself or your organisation, you can read more about the platform here. We have subscriptions available from as little as £5 per month and you can see the available options in our shop here.  

Talking about sensitive issues can be challenging at times. We are so excited to publish this guest blog from Julia Pollock, Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) from the REACH team in Perth, Scotland, explaining how a newly developed Talking Mats resource helps to open up conversations with young people about sex.

REACH is a unique team, one of a kind in Scotland, that provides intensive support for care experienced  children and  young people on the edge of care in Perth & Kinross.  We are a multidisciplinary team bringing together professionals across health, education, social work and youth work. This allows us to provide prompt specialist care, while limiting the need for referrals to multiple agencies.

My colleague, Janie Scott, and I have worked for REACH since its inception, as Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapists. Research shows that more than 60% of care experienced young people have some kind of speech, language and communication need (SLCN) and at REACH we work on the assumption that our young people may have an SLCN – until proven otherwise. This means that we routinely offer communication assessments and support to every single young person (and their parent/carers), in addition to keeping inclusive communication at the heart of everything we do. Adopting this approach ensures that none of our young people have to struggle with communication difficulties unsupported.

Working in a multidisciplinary team with a heavy social work contingent has been a very different experience for Janie and I. The team were open to our training and approaches and allowed us the freedom and autonomy to shape our own SLT service.

One of the first things we did at REACH was to introduce Talking Mats. We are both Talking Mats Licensed Trainers. All our REACH staff, as well as any other colleagues across the council and NHS who also work with our young people are Talking Mats trained.

Despite some initial scepticism around using pictures with teenagers, the resource has since proven to be incredibly useful and engaging for this particular client group. It has now become a staple resource that our staff will reach for regularly to facilitate conversations with our Young People and to help them express their views on complex issues.

Our young people can occasionally find themselves in conflict with the law and wrapped up in the complexities of the criminal justice system, as a result of their often disadvantaged backgrounds, and/or due to a range of ongoing challenges  such as developmental trauma, social emotional and mental health difficulties, and/or Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN).  In addition to supporting REACH clients through their criminal justice journey, our team also specialise in harmful sexual behaviour assessments, for both internal and external clients.

The idea for a Talking Mats resource for harmful sexual behaviour initially came from one of our Senior Practitioner Social Workers, Amy MacKinnon, who suggested that Talking Mats might be a useful tool to support their harmful sexual behaviour assessments (AIM3).  The assessment, which involves interviewing the young person about incredibly sensitive and personal issues, can be quite confronting for young people. We discussed the possibility of having visual resources which would not only cater to the SLCN of our clients, but that would also make the assessment feel less intimidating for the young people, encouraging more open and honest responses.

 We often start by assessing  a young person’s existing level of sexual knowledge and understanding, as how can young people possibly share their version of events if they do not understand the basic concepts of which they were being accused of?

This includes exploring their understanding of the language around sexual physiology and anatomy, in addition to the social and legal considerations of sexual behaviour.  The introduction of this resource allowed us to explore existing knowledge much more effectively than we had previously, with a more logical progression of concepts ranging from the very concrete language for body parts, through to more abstract ideas such as consent.  More careful consideration of the young person’s language level really helps to ensure that the Young Person’s responses are accurate. We recognised that our existing pictures/resources needed development and so I approached Talking Mats to ask if they would consider working with us to create an official Talking Mats resource using their own artwork and branding. I know from experience that their artist, Adam, always does a fantastic job creating simple images that are so easily understood while also being sensitive and inclusive.

We developed a small working group with a handful of REACH and Talking Mats staff  who have focused on developing  a new healthy relationships resource to open up these tricky conversations.  We have now completed the pilot stage,  and have a fantastic resource. Talking Mats did not disappoint and as expected, they worked wonders with the images!

One interesting development along the way was the group’s reflection that the resource had felt quite negative and that perhaps we should keep a more neutral stance when developing the concepts – leaving room for much more general (or even positive) discussions around sexual development too. This allowed us to expand the resource to include concepts relating to puberty and gender identity. We felt that this would make the resource more far-reaching and impactful, while still retaining the option to use the more niche resources for addressing harmful sexual behaviour, when required. 

The feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly positive, with comments such as ‘It’s amazing’ and ‘We’ve been sitting waiting for a resource like this.’ Those trialling the resource for us unanimously felt that the resource helped them to discuss the topic with their clients, helping to ‘open up’ discussions that would otherwise be more challenging to initiate. We have also received a lot of positive feedback on the clarity of the concepts and images; the consensus being that the visuals are easy to understand and unambiguous. This is fantastic feedback given the complex and abstract concepts we were tackling with this resource!

We are looking forward to sharing more information about the project and resource in an Advanced Webinar for practitioners who have already completed Talking Mats Foundation Training, in September 2024.  

Look out for the second part of Julia’s blog next week, to read one of the powerful examples of the positive impact this resource has already had.

Inspired to think about Talking Mats Foundation Training? Find out about all the options we have available here.