Young people with special educational needs and disabilities have experienced many changes in their day to day lives because of the coronavirus (Covid-19) situation. Their routines, regular support, and the people they see may all be different now.
How a young person responds to their individual situation will vary: some may react immediately, some not at all, while others may show signs of difficulty later on.
To support assessments of the wellbeing of children and young people with communication difficulties we have worked with Talking Mats, specialist speech and language therapists at Stirling University, to develop PicSAT, a picture supported assessment tool.
PicSAT incorporates the research based Talking Mats communication symbols which have been shown to improve the quality and quantity of information a person with communication difficulty shares.
The approach provides a structure and framework which helps practitioners engage with young people.
Key features of Viewpoint PicSAT are:
• Automatically spoken and highlighted question and response text when a page opens.
• Responses are selected by tapping on a picture.
• Language level limited to what the young person sees – objects and pictures.
• Pictures linked to items in the World Health Organisation International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health.
• Consideration of the order of the questions both in terms of the complexity of the issues discussed and the natural flow of dialogue.
• Immediate display of responses in both ‘mat’ and ‘wellbeing web’ formats
• Availability of aggregate response data reports for whole cohorts of young people.
The Viewpoint PicSAT can be used independent of other Viewpoint applications. It reports on each of the GIRFEC wellbeing outcomes and provides an opportunity to screen large numbers of young people and to identify those needing more detailed individual assessments and support.