Hospice uses Makaton and music to help children and staff communicate

Makaton is a language programme that uses signs and symbols to support speech to help those with communication difficulties.

Deborah Green, Speech and Language Therapist and Makaton tutor, has teamed up with Sarah Hodkinson, Music Therapist at Shooting Star Chase, to teach Makaton to staff and children through a project called ‘Friendly Hands’.

The hospice hopes that through learning Makaton, all the children and staff at Shooting Star Chase will be able to communicate better with each other.

As a speech and language therapist, Deborah understands the intense frustrations experienced by children who can’t communicate effectively. She has seen first hand how using Makaton can open up so many possibilities for these children to interact with the world around them.

Sarah has seen the power of music and song as a way to engage children at Shooting Star Chase, reaching those with the most profound disabilities through her work as a music therapist.

Each month staff at Shooting Star Chase get together to film a new video, using different subject matter and themes.

The first video – called ‘Eat it’ and to the tune of Michael Jackson’s Beat It – was filmed in the kitchen at Shooting Star House in Hampton and features a number of members of hospice staff.

“Food was the theme this month so we picked some vocabulary which would be useful to the children and we used a video to help teach it in different groups,” said Sarah. “We asked the chef, Bart to take part – the children love seeing him dancing around the kitchen as we sing and sign,“ she added.

Chef Bart added “’cauliflower cheese’, which we sign in the song, is now firmly on the menu and the children love using Makaton to ask for it.”

At a special day for brothers and sisters of life-limited children, Activities Coordinator Vikki German taught the siblings how to sign ‘Eat it’ so that they can sing and sign this with their brother or sister at home.

Each month a new video will have a new theme in order to expand the children’s vocabulary. Through the summer, for example, Deborah and Sarah have some fun songs in the pipeline to help children and staff learn and use Makaton to talk about animals, holidays, seasons, festivals, families and the people who help us.

In the latest video, published on YouTube this week, Sarah has written an Easter Bunny song especially to include lots of signs about Easter. The new film features a number of the hospice team, including chef Bart as the Easter Bunny.