Resources

People talking.

What is "Let's Talk Together"?

The "Let's Talk Together" Programme provides a range of simple, functional and innovative augmentative communication solutions to ensure effective and interactive communication, suited to each individual's abilities, environment, and the specific tasks they want to perform.

Let's Talk Together enhances interactive and functional communication for people with severe communication challenges, many of whom have multiple challenges including intellectual, physical and sensory impairments.

This practical approach to communication helps people with a developmental disability to:

Talking together is about two or more people talking about a range of different things.

When someone has a severe communication impairment talking together becomes much harder, and in some cases impossible. The more difficult it is for a person to talk, the more important it is for the communication partner to use different ways of ensuring that communication takes place.

During the day there are many occasions to communicate. Each activity has a different kind of communication depending on the activity itself and the people present. By creating communication opportunities and providing augmentative communication support, the "Lets Talk Together" Program assists people who have difficulty communicating to plan their day, express their feelings, participate in meetings at home and in the workplace, shop, cook, run a home and talk together within a range of activities.

For help with implementing the "Let's Talk Together" Programme the following resources are available:

Example of communication useing and angled display board.

Let's Talk Together - The Great Ideas Manual.

The "Lets Talk Together" Manual was compiled jointly by Ylana Bloom, Speech Pathologist & Sue Treloar, Special Education Teacher. It is brimming with ideas to ensure the most appropriate communication support is available for the person during every part of the day. It includes a user friendly assessment tool to help determine the needs of each person, a method for testing and teaching the communication strategies to ensure the they are implemented consistently and reliably during the day, and eight different communication systems. We have found that the combination of all these systems increases the quality of life of people with complex communication needs. The package includes information on a:

Let's Talk Together Update!

Let's Talk Together has been updated with the assistance of Dolly Bhargava. It has many new and exciting ideas for both children and adults.

The Let's Talk Together Update includes suggestions on how to identify and link AAC communication systems to help people of all ages communicate in a variety of environments (e.g. classroom, home, work and community. Explanations and examples of a variety of AAC strategies are provided e.g. Schedules, Calendars, Activity checklists, Choice systems, Category books, Chat system, Circle of friends, Social stories, Social scripts, Problem Solutions charts, Behavioural rules etc.

Book Review:

Reviewed by Dr Jennifer Stephenson,
Senior Lecturer in Special Education / Special Education Program Director
Editor Australasian Journal of Special Education
Faculty of Education, UTS

Like Participation Through Communication the Let's Talk Together Update offers a highly practical guide to working with people with severe communication impairment and an intellectual disability. The aim is to provide ideas on using and teaching augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) skills to this population.

The Update begins with a quick overview of AAC, Autism Spectrum Disorder and vocabulary selection. It then focuses on using two processes that the authors refer to as "Visual Connectors" and "Question Maps" to develop ways of using activities to promote and teach interactive communication skills and prosocial behaviour. The AAC resources developed should enable the individual to understand, participate in and talk about activities. Visual connectors are divided into four different types - fact connectors (such as schedules and activity guides), explanation connectors (such as social stories and chat systems), decision connectors (such as choice systems and rosters) and consequence connectors (such as cause-effect links and behavioural rules). Question maps are a tool for the communication partner that helps the partner explore and plan the different aspects of a topic or activity to ensure the individual AAC user is provided with the means and opportunity for participation in that topic or activity.

The Let's Talk Together Update manual explains how to use the question maps and visual connectors to develop AAC resources for an activity and then to plan scripts to use those resources. There are examples of this process for communicators with low, medium and high support needs with illustrations of the resources developed. A section on using the process to help people with autism spectrum disorder cope with change in routine is provided. There are sections on specific AAC tools (or visual connectors) such as schedules, calendars, activity checklists, category books, social stories and scripts, wh questions, choice systems, rating scales, budget systems, meeting systems, cause-effect, shopping lists, behavioural rules, problem solution charts and cue cards. The last part of the book provides examples of the way various AAC tools might be planned around particular activities for different people. There is a reference list that includes useful web sites and a list of Australian organizations that can provide support or resources.

This book would be a useful practical resource for people wanting ideas about using and teaching AAC skills to people with disabilities. It offers little in the way of background information on AAC and picture skills, but does have many practical examples of a range AAC materials which would be useful to practitioners whether or not they choose to use the planning processes described.

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