The Talkabout Series

The Talkabout Series

Talkabout is a complete programme for developing self-esteem, social and friendship skills. It is based on teaching children or young adults in groups in school or college but can be adapted for 1:1 sessions or for use at home. It uses a hierarchical method of developing skills where basic or foundation skills are taught before more complicated skills.

It was developed by Alex Kelly who worked in a FE college with a large number of young adults with intellectual disabilities. After a year of social skills interventions, using pre and post assessments, she noticed a pattern in who was responding and who wasn't, centred around the hierarchy of self-awareness coming before non-verbal skills and non-verbal coming before verbal and assertiveness coming last. Alex developed an intervention based on this hierarchy that was published after extensive testing and piloting.

Many years later, Talkabout has evolved into a series of books for specific client groups, because very different approaches are needed to engage different children and adults.