Talkabout for Adults

Book excerpt: alkabout Adults is a practical resource to help therapists or support staff to develop self-awareness and self-esteem in adults. It has been particularly aimed at adults with an intellectual disability (learning disability) or older children with special needs. It has been adapted from the Talkabout for Children: developing self-awareness and self-esteem book to be suitable for an older audience. This means that some of the activities are almost identical but a number of them have been adapted to be more appropriate. There are also some new activities such as the 'A book about me.' which enables the adults to make up a book over the course of the sessions that will summarise some keys personal facts. This can work well as an addition to a communication passport or equivalent, or can stand alone as an alternative. Talkabout for Adults is a stand-alone resource with approximately a year's worth of activities to develop self-awareness and self-esteem. It has 50 activities to do with adults and it has been successfully piloted at Speaking Space. It includes: a short assessment of self-awareness and self-esteem; a year's worth of work on self-awareness and self-esteem including 50 activities and some worksheets; practical suggestions to make your group work successful including 25 group cohesion activities, a plan for intervention, and forms for monitoring and evaluation. This resource continues to use the Talkabout hierarchical approach to teaching skills, that is, basic self-awareness skills are taught prior to more complex skills such as social skills and friendship skills. This also means that this resource is designed to be used logically from topic 1 through to topic 8. Most of the activities are more suited to working in a group setting but some of them can be adapted for one-to-one work. Alex Kelly is a speech and language therapist who specialises in working with children who have low self esteem, and difficulty with their social skills and friendship skills. She spent 23 years working as a speech and language therapist in the NNHS but now runs her own company - Alex Kelly Ltd. She provides social skills training and consultancy to schools and organisations across the UK and overseas. Her company also provides speech and language therapy in a number of special schools in eh south of England.