We are living in times where clear communication is not just essential; it's life-saving. Introducing the Frontline Workshop for Emergency Services.

The Frontline Workshop equips participants with the skills to use and incorporate Makaton signs and symbols effectively in real-world situations relevant to their workplace. Our primary goal with the Frontline Workshop for Emergency Services is to empower Makaton Users, ensuring they can communicate effectively during crisis situations.

The workshop encompasses vocabulary that resonates with a wide range of frontline services. This ensures that participants emerge with the confidence and understanding required for impactful communication.

Why deliver the Frontline Workshop?

• Expand your impact: You're not just teaching Makaton symbols and signs, you're ensuring that communication is embedded in high-stress environments.
• Stay updated: Our specialised vocabulary set caters to various frontline services, making sure you are always on top of the needs of these sectors.
• Earn more: Expanding your training services means a new avenue for revenue.
• Vocabulary add-ons: We have special add-on vocab sets for sectors such as dentistry, ensuring you’re always in demand!

For further information, please email the Training Team, [email protected]

4th Septmber 2023

We are very pleased to announce the launch of a new Makaton Workshop called Watch My Needs. This workshop is designed for adults who are beginning to experience difficulties with understanding and recall, after having good understanding, recall and use of language. The Watch My Needs Workshop is for direct use with adults with memory difficulties, who should attend the workshop sessions with a supporter.

This workshop is the first of its kind as it will focus on the Makaton Core User at the centre of the programme, with the aims of promoting independence, gaining confidence in making choices and taking part in daily activities. There is no requirement for anyone attending this workshop to have any prior knowledge of Makaton.

Watch My Needs can only be delivered by Makaton Tutors.

The workshop is designed to take place in 5 weekly sessions of 90 minutes each, including time for refreshments on arrival and at a mid-way point.  The complete workshop should take a total of 7 hours 30 minutes. The suggested RRP for the 5 sessions is £50 per person, they will be accompanied by a person supporting but there is no charge for them or a requirement for a manual. For Face to Face delivery we recommend up to 10 participants plus those supporting the participant, making it a maximum of 20 participants on the workshop. For online delivery it is up to 8 participants plus those supporting making a maximum of 16.

The sessions are structured so that:

• The Tutor introduces and models the use of signing and symbols for greetings and
  basic, functional communication for everyday living.
• The supporter attending the sessions with the person experiencing memory
  difficulties is expected to take a role in revising and revisiting the concepts covered
  in class in-between sessions.
• Copies of resources used in the sessions are provided in the Participant’s Manual for the person experiencing memory difficulties to take home and continue using with support.

You can purchase the Tutor materials to deliver the Watch My Needs Workshop the Tutor section of the shop:

• Tutor Guidelines (£125)
• Participant’s Manuals (£10) 

Please note these sessions are designed for Face to Face delivery, however a guide to adapt the sessions for online delivery will be available in The Makaton Library after purchase of the Tutor Guidelines.

If you have any questions, please contact the Training Team on [email protected] or 01276 606777.

All licensed Makaton Signing for Babies (MSB) Trainers should have been invited to renew their licences online last month. Makaton Signing for Babies licences start from 1st April and end on 31st March each year. This year, MSB Trainers have access to so much more on the Makaton website (the Hub) as part of their licences and membership.

Ambassadors Amanda Glennon and Kerry Cawley have set up a Makaton Signing for Babies online network for Trainers to attend.

Within the Library on the Hub, MSB Trainers now have access to all the line drawings and symbols needed to deliver a full Makaton Signing for Babies course, as well as having access to the Core Vocabulary line drawings, videos and symbols!

There have been a few more changes to the MSB Trainer Makaton membership accounts. There is now an MSB MakaChat  area for MSB Trainers to access, ask questions, share ideas and discussions together. There is also a Share Bank just for MSB Trainers to upload and share photos, ideas and resources.

As part of their licence, MSB Trainers can attend the new Makaton Events  that are being delivered to our Membership and view them at a later date from the Makaton Events sub folder within the Library section of the Hub!

And now there are new official Makaton Trainer polo shirts  available to buy in the shop area on the Makaton website!

If you are interested in becoming a Makaton Trainer, there are different criteria to meet! Have a look on the Makaton website for further information and details. If you are a Makaton Signing for Babies Trainer, have a look to see what’s new on the Hub and come along to a network meeting!

Author

Kerry Cawley

Makaton Ambassador Tutor
29th March 2021

We are committed to offering our members more value, and as part of this commitment we are scheduling monthly events for our members, to support with a range of topics that we know are important to you.

All member events are open to Tutors and MSB Trainers.

List of events

Published

10th February 2020

Want to earn extra money doing what you love the most?

An exciting opportunity is here… to become an In-house Trainer for The Makaton Charity and earn £175 per Workshop.

The Makaton Charity arranges In-house training for organisations, where we match customers up with Tutors from their local area wherever possible (even when the training is online).  Most of these workshops are Level 1. The Makaton Charity’s Training Coordinator is the administrator and main point of contact for In-house delivery, taking responsibility for customer contact, arranging payment and delivery of workshop resources.

We are looking for Tutors to join the Makaton Team of contracted In-house trainers through an Associate Agreement, to deliver the training on our behalf: fee of £175 per Online workshop.

To deliver workshops on behalf of the Charity, Tutors must:

• Be licensed and up to date with Study Days
• Deliver online training as per the guidelines from TMC
• Have your own Zoom account (paid-for, not the free service)
• Have a stable internet connection and device with webcam, speaker and microphone
• Be a team player and represent TMC’s values of Excellence, Collaboration, Integrity, Innovation and Respect
• Be well organised
• Be willing to work with Makaton HQ to promote the language programme

The Charity also runs regular public Level 1 – 4 workshops online and we are looking to set up an ongoing programme with several Tutors each delivering one or two workshops a month. The aim of this programme is not to compete with the wider Network, but rather to add in additional capacity where supply and demand do not match, together with building wider capacity within the network.

Please contact our training coordinator Alex at [email protected] if you’d like to be considered for delivering training as an Associate.

Please include your location and any days/times you are regularly available to work.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Published

17th November 2020

Level 4 has arrived… woohoo!

We were hoping to have it ready by the end of October, however we have managed to get it out even sooner than anticipated and I’m sure you are as excited as we are!  Please see the guidance below on how you can download and purchase the relevant materials, and the dates from which you can begin advertising, ordering resources and running the workshop.

Click here for steb-by-step instructions on how to download the Level 4 Tutor Guidelines from the Makaton Library, along with the Power Point, videos and resources and guidelines for online training
(The article title refers to the 30 day free trial, but the instructions explain how to download the available levels, including Level 4.)

Monday 21st September

• Online training Level 4 guidance: Tutor Guidelines + Videos + online training guidance available to download.
• Able to advertise L4 Workshop on Website (for delivery from 12th October onwards)

Monday 28th September

• Can order Level 4 Participant Manuals and Hard copy of Tutor Guidelines from the Makaton Shop. This is available online within the Tutor resources section of your Makaton Hub login on the home page. No Pre-ordering of materials available.

Monday 12th October

• Can begin delivering Level 4 workshop.
• You may only deliver Level 4 training from this date as you MUST allow time for the resources to be sent as well as understanding the course content as a Tutor.

Costings

• Hard copy of Tutor Guidelines: £25
• Participant Manuals: £18
• Online training RRP: £69 pp

Free Downloads available from the Makaton Library using guidance in link above, from 21st September:

• Tutor Guidelines
• Powerpoints & Videos
• Online training Guidance and resources

You will be able to purchase the printed items (Tutor Guidelines and Participant's Manuals) from the Tutor shop area  from 28th September

Please do not try to place orders before 28th September.

Remember to download the joining email, giving your participants access to the evaluation form and in return if they haven’t had a free trial already they will gain a 30 day free trial of the Core membership.

Published

20th August 2020

If you were unable to attend our live webinar about evaluation forms and the 30-day free membership trial, don't despair! Here's a video of the webinar, covering the following:

• Process for Tutors to offer a 30-day free trial
• Updated Powerpoint with additional slides
• How to complete evaluation forms and receive your feedback
• MakaChat

Published

20th August 2020

We would like to congratulate and celebrate the success of the new Makaton Ambassadors being welcomed onboard to support with a wide variety of areas with their skill and expertise.

They are the first cohort of Ambassadors to be announced since our founder Margaret Walker left her legacy of our Senior Tutors, who continue to strive to maintain the quality of the Makaton Language Programme and continue to pass on the knowledge to our Ambassadors. You will see our Ambassadors out about in the community supporting the development of Makaton across all possible aspects.

We will have another role out of Ambassadors, so not to worry if you haven’t made it through this time, there will still be opportunity. We also have our eyes on our next cohort that we would like to invite to become an Ambassador, so you may be hearing from us shortly!

We are aware that we have a lot of Tutors with a huge passion for Makaton and its community, and we want to know who you are as we don’t always know unless we have regular contact or on social media. With so much happening, please contact us to re-highlight who you are. (If you previously messaged Zanna, we have you noted down already.)

Published

19th August 2020

If you were unable to attend one of our live webinars about the new Makaton Hub and Library, don't despair! Here's a video of the first webinar, covering the following:

• Discover the new Makaton website
• A guide to the new Tutor renewal process
• Walkthrough the Makaton Hub
• A look around the Makaton Library
• Q & A session

Published

24th July 2020

There will be no face-to-face Study Days this year due to Covid-19.  All sessions will be delivered remotely via the platform Zoom.

The sessions will be delivered from September 2020 to April 2021.

We will be delivering two 3-hour sessions (Session 1 and Session 2) over a variety of dates and times, which will be launched when the relicensing process opens.

You must attend both sessions to fulfil your CPD.  The cost will be £49, which includes both sessions. (The £49 is attached to Session 1 and Session 2 is 'free'.  You need to book both sessions at the same time.)

Book Study Day sessions

Published

24th June 2020

You may have noticed... we have changed our look!

We felt it right to inform our Tutors that it was brought to our attention that the Okey logo was being misused in certain areas of society. After careful consideration we have decided that the most responsible and appropriate thing to do is to change our logo.

In doing so we have tried to encompass traditional Makaton with a modern feel. We know that many of you loved the M logo so we have brought this back with the addition of the circle to represent the Makaton Family.

You might still see the Okey around, but we are slowly phasing this out as a logo and replacing it with the revised Makaton Family logo.

The hand shape will still be used when signing Good, however as there are two versions of the sign 'Good', we encourage signing Good ‘thumbs up’ in photographs.

New Tutor logos will be available for download from the Makaton Library.

Published

24th June 2020

Due to the current situation and social distancing restrictions we made the decision to launch Makaton training online. Makaton Tutor Kerry Cawley writes about her experience delivering the online workshops...

As Tutors we’ve all been given a great opportunity of extending our own skill sets and delivering Makaton training online during this period of social distancing and restrictions.

So far I have delivered four online courses (with another starting tomorrow!) and I was asked to share my experiences of it with others. When it was announced that we could deliver training online I was very apprehensive. There was just so much to learn. How to conduct meetings online? Which system to choose? (I chose Cisco WebEx and find it runs well). I was quite worried that the networking and socialising opportunities would be lost for participants. Would people still be as engaging whilst staring at a screen? Would the quality of Makaton still be maintained in 2D teaching?

I soon realised that things just had to be thought in different ways. It was a good excuse to tidy and organise my dining room to turn it into a ‘training studio’ of sorts! I found an old monitor that I hooked up to my laptop so that I could really see people signing clearly – I found that helped lots and eased eye strain.

There were different elements of the training that I had to rethink. I decided that instead of handing out the sentence strips within face to face workshops, I could post them out to participants with their manuals. So I cut up the resource sheets into little packs of 8. Each participant received some sentences from the lists for them to use within the Workshop. I sourced some strong cardboard envelopes that fit the manuals well and thought these looked professional and kept the manuals in good condition in the post. I posted them all with proof of posting at the Post Office (no extra charge) as this would provide some insurance should they get lost.

On the first day of the Workshop I kept time for participants to have a fiddle of their screens when in the meeting. We discussed how to change the page layout, worked out how to mute and unmute and turn off videos. There were a few issues with sound, but we found that things settled down after a few minutes. Most people used earphones or headsets. I found using Bluetooth earphones worked well. We said that if anyone got themselves sent out of the meeting, just to go back into their original email and rejoin the meeting. Some participants switched devices during this time to get a better view etc. One lady used a laptop that she said was a bit old. She had difficulty viewing me as the image buffered (it was the same for me). She switched to a tablet device and this worked well. We problem solved as a team.  I explained that we were all new to these new ways of working and I found everyone to be very patient and pleased that they now could use this method of meeting. I kept everyone muted whilst I spoke to prevent feedback, but did ask that if anyone had a question or comment, to unmute themselves and put a hand up so that I could see who was speaking – this worked very well although it did feel a bit odd just talking away to my laptop in my dining room!

The first Communicating Together activity was a strange one to deliver. I set the scenario that I was meeting them for the first time and was going to use a different communication method to engage with them and for the participants to get that information down. We discussed how it would make them feel if they met somebody that they couldn’t understand and the other person couldn’t understand them. This led well onto the slide of Both Experienced, Both Used and Both Needed. This set the scene for some lovely discussions.

I surprised myself at how true to face to face training the online training was. I ran the rest of the Workshop as I would any other day. The only real exception was with the sentence strips. But as they had them with them, the participants could join in fully. I think having them helped them to move around a little as they shared their sentences up to the camera for the others to see. It was great for them to hold up their List M sentences and see the symbols that they had drawn.

Break times were interesting! Instead of having an attendee ask questions when you’re dying for a cuppa, I was able to make a drink and have a comfort break easily! We did have a tea break with our drinks all unmuted and sat and chatted as we would have done in a physical room. It was lovely!

I have had some marvellous feedback from participants so far on how they felt of the online training. It has been very reassuring and positive indeed. My participants enjoyed the Workshops and meeting and chatting with each other. They enjoyed the online experience and would look to book further online Makaton training again.

I am pleased that I decided to deliver training online and especially pleased that I decided not to overthink every little detail. I am looking forward to delivering more training online soon (tomorrow)!

Author

Kerry Cawley

24th April 2020

Hannah demonstrating the sign for Coronavirus / Covid-19. The sign for Coronavirus is made up with the half c handshape, with your dominant hand, followed by Infection 0001.

Published

9th April 2020

Get excited... online training has arrived!

We are living through some of the most challenging times our country has known, creating levels of fear and uncertainty not experienced for over 70 years.

As all of us who work in the sector know, this is even more acutely felt by those with a learning disability or communication need; and we at The Makaton Charity are committed to doing all we can to support you, our Tutors, our community of users, and the wider network, to get through this period.

In our recent video blog , we outlined the steps we are taking to expand the support available to both our Makaton users and their wider circle of support. This included making an enhanced range of digital support and services available, together with launching additional free downloads for our community.  The programme kicked off this week and we have already seen over 90,000 people engaging with our posts and offers, a great sign that the strategy is working.

But we need to go further, so in line with our recent commitment to allow and support online training, I’m pleased to announce today the publication of both our Makaton Online Training Guidelines, together with the first in a range of workshop specific guidance , which will help you to maximise the learning experience for each and every person accessing Makaton training across all the levels and programmes in the network.

Clearly this is a significant change to our historical delivery methodology, and I would like to pay tribute and thanks to Zanna Finnerty, our Director of The Makaton Language Programme, the Senior Tutors, and the wider staff team who have designed, piloted and drafted these guides in what is a very short timeline.

The work continues, and we will in due course, bring forward additional guidance for Level 2 and other programmes, together with launching our new Level 3 and Level 4 Workshops, which will from the start be designed for both digital and traditional delivery.

This is a learning curve for all of us and as part of the process of maintaining both quality standards; together with successful learning, we ask that you adopt a range of mandatory standards outlined in the guides; the key standards are:

• Observing a maximum number of candidates attending online training sessions – no more than eight participants per workshop.
• That Workshop sessions should be broken down into manageable chunks, with sessions no longer than 4 hours and with regular breaks.
• That Workshops are delivered within a commercial meeting platform package, ensuring a high quality of video image is available to participants, together with removing issues around sessions stopping after 40 minutes.
• That Tutors continue to use and provide the approved Makaton Workshop materials and manuals.
• That for all online training sessions, Tutors must provide the Charity with an online link, so that on a random basis a representative of the Charity may observe the Workshop being provided.

Moving into the digital space brings with it challenges of logistics around how candidates access their manuals, together with questions around setting and adhering to a common pricing policy, as a digital provision will no longer be limited by geographical boundaries.

On the first of these issues, we are working to develop methodologies and capacity to directly deliver workshop manuals from our print supplier to participants; together with looking at how digital Workshop material delivery might be achieved. These additional options will take time to come online, and I must ask in the interim that our Tutor network continues to bulk order participant manuals and then dispatch these yourselves to your clients.

Turning to the issue of pricing, after consultation and much consideration, we are proposing a Recommended Retail Price of £59 per Workshop (one “day “ of training = two 4 hour sessions). This is proposed as an introductory offer price, set by the Charity which aims to ensure that the cost of all online Workshops is fair and consistent across the country.

Finally in closing, let me apologise in advance, given the speed of change we are adopting, we may not get this guidance completely right first time round. Where you feel changes might be helpful, do feed these into the office via [email protected], please title your email in the subject bar ‘Level 1 Online Feedback’  and we will endeavour to incorporate them in future updates.

Can I thank everyone within the network for their many emails, texts and Facebook posts of support and encouragement, together with the great work that you are collectively doing to support the Makaton community.  We will get through this period and I know the Makaton network will rise to the challenge ahead.

Thank you again for all your great work, do keep safe and keep signing.

Author

Stephen Hall

Chief Executive, The Makaton Charity
[email protected]

3rd April 2020