Towards a Culture of Communication and Involvement

The commitment of communication partners to communicate with, and involve, people with learning disabilities requires the active promotion of a culture that is positive and empowering. It is also important for communication partners to consider how they view disability because this greatly influences the way in which they support people. The social and medical models of disability demonstrate how disability can be perceived and how society views disabled people. Attitudes and perceptions towards people with learning disabilities can greatly affect the communication opportunities and quality of support provided.

Some of the barriers to communication that might exist in services supporting people with a learning disability include the following:

• Lack of understanding; eg assumptions are made that people cannot communicate.
• Lack of confidence or experience (which may result in a person not engaging with someone who uses alternative methods of communication).
• Lack of guidance and support available to practitioners.
• Lack of training in communication approaches and tools.
• Lack of skills among practitioners and managers.
• Lack of creativity in approaches.
• Poor, or no, support plans which show how a person communicates and how they like people to communicate with them.
• Information not being shared between practitioners, teams and services.
• Lack of communication tools preventing a person from communicating in the way they are used to.
• Limited resources to support communication.
• Assumptions made about what a person cannot participate in, is able or unable to do, about what they like or dislike, and their preferences or opinions.

The above information is an extract from the book ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability’.

You can purchase 'Communicate with Me A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability’ book with companion online resource and quality assurance frameworks from Speechmark www.speechmark.net , Amazon and all good book retailers.

You can also join the:

•Communicate with Me Communication Partner Development Scheme

•Communicate with Me Internal Quality Assurance Scheme  

 visit www.communicatewithme.com

Main text cited from: 

© Martin Goodwin, Jennie Miller, Cath Edwards (2015) abridged section from ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability. Speechmark Publishing

Welcome to A Quiet Place. A Place Full of Mind…

This place exists everywhere for everyone at every moment, which is the present moment.There is in fact nowhere else to be. The past is a memory highlighted by the emotional charge whether positive or negative of the experience and at each retelling it changes and shifts according to the audience, the mood, indeed that very present moment. The future is speculation informed by the emotional charge of the past which in itself is a story…it is all a story…your story.

Interest in Mindfulness, a concept inherited from Buddhism, is now being utilised by psychologists as a secular technique to alleviate a variety of mental and physical conditions. In itself it is a small part of meditation techniques but a simple and useful part for those who have no wider interest in meditation. It has been adapted for the western mind.
The application of these techniques on an individual level is another story of course. Persuading anyone to change their behaviour is very difficult. Gentle steps and on going support is really the only effective way to intervene when symptoms are in crisis. 

New findings have shown:

• A little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation. (Zeidan, Journal of Neuroscience)
• Increases in mindfulness correlated with reductions in burnout and total mood disturbance, as well as increased stress resilience. (Krasner, JAMA).
• Participants who received mindfulness training showed a 42% decrease in the frequency and severity of primary IBS symptoms. (G. Andersson, Behavior Research and Therapy)
• Mindfulness meditation affects brain activity. Brain waves associated with integration increase during compassion meditation. When meditating, brain scans found increased activity in the following areas of the brain: insula, termporal pole/superior temporal gyrus, anterior cingulate, while the amygdala is less active. Overall, this is consistent with decreased arousal and an increased sense of well-being. (S. Lazar)
• Meditation improves attention. (Jha et al., 2007), (Slagter 2007), (Pagnoni & Cekic 2007), (Valentine & Sweet, 1999)
• You don’t have to be a seasoned meditator to see positive changes to your brain. New meditators who went through an 8-week meditation program saw changes in gray matter concentration in brain regions involved with learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking. (Lazar, Psychiatry Research, 2011)

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”  

Thich Nhat  Hanh –Stepping into Freedom, monastic practice for monks

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” 
Thich Nhat  Hanh –Peace is every step.

“Each place is the right place--the place where I now am can be a sacred space. ”  
Ravi Ravindra The wisdom of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras

“. . . I feel we don’t really need scriptures. The entire life is an open book, a scripture. Read it. Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food. If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to understand the scriptures? ” 
 Swami Satchananda The Yoga Sutras

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.” 
 Ram Dass  “Be Here Now”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” 
Alan Watts “ Future, Past, Real”

Awareness: Ram Dass

Living in the present: Alan Watts

- Penny Moon

Speechmark author The Practical Well-Being Programme

Communication and Learning Disability

Communication with and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability

Currently, there is a range of support options for people with learning disabilities. Traditionally, the majority of people will receive support from services throughout their lives, to a greater or lesser extent.  These services may include school or college, play and leisure services, residential or short break services, day services or supported employment. People may also be included in community circles of friends and other unpaid natural support. Increasingly, people with learning disabilities access personalised support which they may manage, with varying degrees of help from other people, as well as using a greater range of community settings.

The nature of support provided by each of these options may be different but all communication partners share the same challenge. Because the proportion of people with learning disabilities who experience difficulties in communicating is so high, the challenge is to effectively meet people’s communication needs and involve them in their lives and their communities.

How a person is supported to communicate and be involved in their lives can greatly impact on that person’s quality of life.  It follows, then, that the ability of the communication partner to support effective communication and involvement is central to an improved quality of life

The above information is an extract from the book ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable EffectiveCommunication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability’.

You can purchase 'Communicate with Me A Resource toEnable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a LearningDisability’ book with companion online resource and quality assurance frameworks from Speechmark, Amazon and all good book retailers.

You can also join the:

•Communicate with Me Communication Partner Development Scheme

•Communicate with Me Internal Quality Assurance Scheme  

 visit www.communicatewithme.com

Main text cited from: 

© Martin Goodwin, Jennie Miller, Cath Edwards (2015) abridged section from ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability. Speechmark Publishing

A Guide to School Start 2e

The first year of school can be challenging for plenty of children. There are some who need that extra help.

One resource to help in this case is School Start 2e. This practical guide can be used with children who need additional help in developing communication skills during the crucial first year of school.

Successfully trialled over a three-year period, School Start 2e is an invaluable resource for teachers and teaching assistants that encourages good collaborative practice between schools, speech & language therapists, the school's inclusion coordinator and parents.

This early intervention group programme is aimed at enhancing children's language and sound awareness skills during Reception Year in mainstream primary schools

It comes with simple checklists to identify suitable children, contains weekly sessions with 3 activities and handouts, and provides forms for recording outcomes.

One of the materials included in this resource is group sessions for the Language and Sound Awareness programmes. The following video is an example of an assessment for the language group: 

A walk-through the kit used for an assessment:

 Resources for the Sound Awareness Checklist:

Resources for the Language Checklist:

Details of the checklist:

Example of prepared resources for delivery of the groups:

The results over a 3 year pilot provides evidence that the programmes have been successful in the schools that have used it. 

Testimonial for School Start:

Speechmark authors Catherine De La Bedoyere and Catharine Lowry have been Speech & Language therapists for 15 years. Catherine De La Bedoyere also taught postgraduate teachers at Kingston University and currently works at Sussex Community NHS Trust. Catharine Lowry's experience has been within language units, community clinics and special schools for children with MLD and is presently in the mainstream service for Your Healthcare NHS provider in Kingston Upon Thames

Know more or order School Start 2e.

Importance of mental wellbeing among SEN children

Evidence shows that children and young people with SEN can be up to six times more likely than their peers to experience mental health problems.* So, just why is this? Well, firstly, all of the usual issues that can affect any child, will also affect those with SEN. Secondly, children and young people with SEN can often experience lower self-esteem than their peers, be more vulnerable to bullying, have difficulties understanding social situations and making friends, and can feel isolated from their peers, both academically and socially. 

Some may also find that they have less independence than their classmates, or can find it harder to recognise and talk about their emotions. All of these things can in turn increase the risk of mental health issues.

Mental health difficulties in young people with SEN can also often be missed or overlooked.  Sometimes it can be easy to put issues down simply to a child’s SEN (‘Oh, anxiety is just part of his dyslexia’, ‘She’s bound to feel lonely and left out because of her autism’). School staff may also feel that they lack the expertise to help a child with SEN (‘But he has ADHD so will need specialist support. I don’t know how to help him.’), or indeed that they lack the background in mental health to be able to make a difference.

So, what can we do as educators to promote mental health in children and young people with SEN?

1. Promote mental wellbeing strategies – just because a child has SEN does not mean they won’t benefit from the same strategies as others: teaching them to recognise their strengths, to cultivate positive emotions and to understand their emotions. Many will also benefit from improving their problem-solving abilities and self-esteem.
2. Ensure that you know referral procedures in your setting for specialist support for students experiencing more significant difficulties.
3. Try not to make the situation worse. Sometimes it can be easy to have a deficit-based approach to students with SEN, focusing on what they can’t do, or on closing the gap between them and their peers. It is important that we don’t eliminate the ‘fun’ and vocational aspects of the curriculum which these pupils in particular will benefit from, and that we focus on accelerating strengths and increasing enjoyment of school as these things will have a positive knock-on effect on a child’s wellbeing.

From the book: The Sky's the Limit

 - Victoria Honeybourne

Speechmark author The Sky's The Limit

*NASS (2015) Making Sense of Mental Health, online, www.nasschools.org.uk/nass/making-sense- mental-health/

Not just memories - a way to promote well-being

Reminiscing, the recollection of past memories, is something that we all use in our lives. We use it to cope in times of stress such as when mourning someone and to repair damage to our self-esteem and image. Conversations usually begin with something like ‘Do you remember when we …’ 

It is fun and creates a feeling of shared experience, reinforces our sense of self-importance and feelings of self-worth. We derive a feeling of belonging and togetherness. It also helps us put our present situation into context.

The use of reminiscence for these purposes with older people and those in the early to moderate stages of dementia is well established. Other benefits include:

• Providing opportunities to socialise, make friends and take part in an enjoyable activity 
• Enabling carers to find out more about the individual’s past, their interests and to see them as a person and not just someone who is growing older and has to be cared for. It also enables carers to understand each individual’s outlook on life and support them in an appropriate way.    
• Sharing life accomplishments which promotes respect, maintains self-esteem and a positive self-concept
• Integrating the past with the present
• Assisting with the life review process
• Providing information for conversations with cognitively impaired individuals 

It is important that the materials you use for reminiscing has flexibility to meet personal needs and can be used on a one-to-one basis, by residents to play with each other, in groups and by carers and family members when visiting or at home. Being adaptable for use in a variety of environments and for different purposes ensures maximum use of the materials and value for money.

One such product is the ‘LifeHistories Game by Robin Dynes’. The game makes the activity fun to do and something in which everyone can participate and enjoy. There are numerous ways in which the cards supplied with the game can be used, including for drawing, writing and recording material for producing life histories. Instructions are included.

A book – Writing Life Histories - which looks at the different types of life histories and how to compile them is also available. The book provides activities, strategies and material for prompting memories and also discusses ethical issues. Writing Life Histories provides ideas for stimulating creative projects, aides to memory, an enjoyable hobby and a record of the person’s life for children and grandchildren. 

- Robin Dynes
Speechmark author Writing Life Histories

Why meal times should be about communication, not TV!

Eating at a meal table while watching TV is much more common than it used to be. Twenty years or more ago we might have sat down to eat at a table without a TV as often as three times a day. Having a TV present not only restricts conversation around the table but also models to babies and toddlers that it is possible to eat, talk and watch the TV at the same time – something which good communicators might do but not children who still need to learn the vital non-verbal conversational skills that enable us to communicate effectively.

Things have changed so much since the 1980s that meals are now mostly held either in front of the TV on knees or trays, or because of our busy lifestyles, at different times and in different parts of the house while we do other things. 

Let’s just think of how many non-verbal communication skills are developed round a family meal table, a great many of which are to do with learning to recognise the beginning and ending signals for daily activities and to predict what will happen next:

1. A baby sitting on his parent’s knee would see all that was going on at the table, as would a toddler sitting in her high chair
2. She would see the preparation of the meal, telling her food is on its way
3. The laying of the table, telling her food is coming and about how many people are expected
4. Parents calling for other members of the family to come and eat
5. The arrival of the food on plates telling her the food is served and that ‘eating time’ has started
6. They will then eat the food
7. The end of the eating activity will be indicated by empty and messy plates
8. There will be dirty cutlery to confirm this
9. The plates will be removed and taken to the sink or put in the dishwasher
10. The table is then in a state of flux awaiting the arrival of the pudding
11. The child might see the pudding being made ready
12. The pudding arrives on clean plates signalling the the start of the next course
13. People eat it and clear their plates signalling the end of eating
14. The table is cleared and the washing up started (the next activity with beginning and ends)

Why is this important? Because observing and predicting the start and finish of each element of our daily life helps us learn to anticipate what is going to happen next, deal with movement from one activity to another and, communicatively,  identify when words and sentences start and finish. There is much more that happens but I hope this gives an idea of how much can be learned simply by watching at mealtimes. If the TV is there to distract, the child may miss out on all this developmental input.

On top of what she can learn from watching, remember that throughout the meal family or carers will be talking about the food and what has been going on or will happen next – ‘Please pass the salt’, ‘Did you grow the potatoes?’, ‘How many sausages do you want?’, ‘What are we going to do after tea?’ etc – so that young children will listen and watch the signals passing between people telling them how to identify the ends of phrases and when it is their turn to speak, etc. They will also learn different ways of asking and responding to questions, intonation and facial expressions.

For more on all this and what can be done to make sure children don’t miss out on this essential period of development, please see my book, Not Just Talking which talks about this and much more about non-verbal communication development in children from birth until 19 years of age.

- Sioban Boyce
Speechmark author Not Just Talking

A visual thesaurus can make all the difference

The idea for The Blob Visual Emotional Thesaurus came from my experiences teaching writing in the classroom. Like most teachers, the need to encourage children to edit and improve their work is an endless task. Having a pile of thesauruses in the middle of each set of desks is helpful to further enrich children's vocabulary.

This was especially true when it came to developing characters feelings -teachers who encourage children to include this in their stories usually end up getting happy or sad! When I told them to look for alternatives in the thesaurus, they would select the most unusual, because they had no idea what these words meant.

In the Visual Emotional Thesaurus, this has been overcome in two ways. Firstly, every feeling has an image to visualise how a character might feel. When trying to use words outside of their experience, that is essential. Secondly, a visual range of feelings has been developed so that children can select how intensely their character might be feeling.

This book has been developed to empower writers and to reduce the need for teachers to have to intervene during the redrafting process.

The Blobs have been used to illustrate the feelings. They have no gender, age, fashion or colour, enabling all children to read and identify with the feelings. Blobs have been used in all key stages of education, which means that confident infant readers can access these emotional words as well as older children.

- Ian Long

Speechmark illustrator of Blobs

Useful communication guidance for pupils with special needs

Communicate with Me was written in response to a need to improve how the services for people with learning disabilities communicate with, and involve, the people they support.  It was written as a resource to support work practice and a quality assurance tool to support services to integrate these practices into service culture.  Communication is integral to delivering a quality service for people with a learning disability and effective communication enhances the quality of that support.

Communicate with Me is a resource that provides guidance to anyone who supports someone with a learning disability, whether they are a paid practitioner (employed by a service or directly by an individual), a family member, an advocate or another member of that person’s community. 

Communicate with Me is a learning resource designed to further the abilities of all communication partners to both communicate more effectively with people with a learning disability and to support people in a way which enables them to become more involved in their own lives. 

Communicate with Me is designed to support the whole service to consider and develop both how it communicates with, and involves, people with a learning disability in a way which enables change to become embedded in the culture and shared values of that service.

The above is an extract from the book ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability’.

You can purchase 'Communicate with Me A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability’ book with companion online resource and quality assurance frameworks from Speechmark www.speechmark.net , Amazon and all good book retailers.

You can also join the:

•Communicate with Me Communication Partner Development Scheme

•Communicate with Me Internal Quality Assurance Scheme  

 visit www.communicatewithme.com

Main text cited from: 

© Martin Goodwin, Jennie Miller, Cath Edwards (2015) abridged section from ‘Communicate with Me – A Resource to Enable Effective Communication and Involvement of People with a Learning Disability. Speechmark Publishing