Key Word Sign Goals

Key Word Sign Goals

One of the first and most important things to do to guide your planning, is to decide on your communication goals. Your goals will determine what resources and service you can have funded under the NDIS.

You may decide that you want to:

  • Improve your language skills and how you communicate with others. This is an Expressive Communication goal.
  • Improve how you understand others and the world around you. This is a Receptive Communication goal.
  • Improve the way you interact with others and join in activities and events around you. This is a Participation goal.

You may have more than one communication goal. We all use many different skills to communicate. So, there are many meaningful communication goals you can include in your NDIS plan.

Once you have decided on your goals, you can work out what resources and services will help you meet them. Key Word Sign might be one strategy to help you meet your communication goals. But you can have several communication supports in one NDIS plan. Like Key Word Sign, a communication book with picture symbols, and a Speech Generating Device.

Communication development and participation always involves a communication partner (parent, family, friends, educators, support workers). For this reason, supports to achieve expressive, receptive or participation goals for a person with communication difficulties may be for communication partners. It is hard for anyone to learn Key Word Sign if no one around them is using it. For key word sign to be a valuable method of communication other people need to know and understand signs too.

Here are some examples of common expressive, receptive and participation goals. We demonstrate how Key Word Sign can be one strategy to help address these goals.

Expressive Goals

To support the Participant’s ability to communicate more easily and effectively with their peers in educational, recreational, vocational and community settings (e.g. Scouts, day activities or an employment setting).

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs, or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
Rationale for supports

The people who talk to and with the person with communication difficulties across their day, need to at least understand Key Word Signs. Imagine how discouraging and frustrating it would be to use Key Word Sign and gestures to try to get a message across and find that the people you are communicating to don’t understand you!

Creating a true communication environment means that, at the Participant’s school, not only the teachers and teacher’s aides understand Key Word Sign, but so do the other children in the class, and the person in the office, and the person at the school crossing.

Ideally, the people around the Participant will also use Key Word Sign and gesture themselves! Using the same mode of communication is a great way to acknowledge and validate the person with the communication difficulty.

Ensuring that adults around the child are using Key Word Sign all day every day is the most effective way to promote understanding and use of Key Word Sign by the child’s peers. Children learn through the examples they are provided by adults.

To include the use of Key Word Sign as part of a speech pathology service focusing on speech, language and communication development.

For example, if the goal is for a child to use a sentence such as ‘The girl is jumping’, adding signs and gestures helps with understanding the order of the words in the sentence, and helps promote the use of the subject (girl) and verb (jump), as well as making it easier to work out whether or not the child is including them when they say the sentence.

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Therapy intervention provided by a KWS accredited provider.
  2. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
Rationale for supports

Integration of Key Word Sign as one of a range of evidence-based strategies to help with development of speech, language and communication skills increases the ability of the participant to get their message across. Using Key Word Sign also provides a means for the therapist to understand and respond to the child’s communication in ways that increase the child’s developmental opportunities e.g by recasting, or expanding, or adding sound production cueing etc.

To support development of protective behaviours

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
  5. Provision of consultative supports from an accredited Key Word Sign practitioner.
Rationale for supports

Programmes/activities/strategies to support children and adults with disabilities to understand safe touching and protective behaviours benefit from the inclusion of Key Word Sign and part of the learning support strategies. Incorporating Key Word Sign helps people to learn and understand concepts as well as providing opportunities for people to learn the vocabulary that they may need to report their experiences and express their feelings.

Personnel who have a role in supporting protective behaviours, recognising signs of abuse, receiving, and responding to reports of abuse and providing emotional and social support for people with disabilities who have experienced abuse are able to include the use of Key Word Sign and Gesture as part of their communication positive support provision (this may be through the use of an accredited Key Word Sign practitioner providing consultant support or acting as an ‘intermediary’).

Receptive Goals

To support the Participant’s ability to communicate more easily and effectively with their peers in educational, recreational, vocational and community settings (e.g. Scouts, day activities or an employment setting).

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs, or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
Rationale for supports

The people who talk to and with the person with communication difficulties across their day, need to at least understand Key Word Signs. Imagine how discouraging and frustrating it would be to use Key Word Sign and gestures to try to get a message across and find that the people you are communicating to don’t understand you!

Creating a true communication environment means that, at the Participant’s school, not only the teachers and teacher’s aides understand Key Word Sign, but so do the other children in the class, and the person in the office, and the person at the school crossing.

Ideally, the people around the Participant will also use Key Word Sign and gesture themselves! Using the same mode of communication is a great way to acknowledge and validate the person with the communication difficulty.

Ensuring that adults around the child are using Key Word Sign all day every day is the most effective way to promote understanding and use of Key Word Sign by the child’s peers. Children learn through the examples they are provided by adults.

Participation Goals

To support the Participant’s ability to communicate more easily and effectively with their peers in educational, recreational, vocational and community settings (e.g. Scouts, day activities or an employment setting).

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs, or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
Rationale for supports

The people who talk to and with the person with communication difficulties across their day, need to at least understand Key Word Signs. Imagine how discouraging and frustrating it would be to use Key Word Sign and gestures to try to get a message across and find that the people you are communicating to don’t understand you!

Creating a true communication environment means that, at the Participant’s school, not only the teachers and teacher’s aides understand Key Word Sign, but so do the other children in the class, and the person in the office, and the person at the school crossing.

Ideally, the people around the Participant will also use Key Word Sign and gesture themselves! Using the same mode of communication is a great way to acknowledge and validate the person with the communication difficulty.

Ensuring that adults around the child are using Key Word Sign all day every day is the most effective way to promote understanding and use of Key Word Sign by the child’s peers. Children learn through the examples they are provided by adults.

To support increased engagement and connection with school.

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs, or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Therapy intervention.
  5. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
Rationale for supports

Is important that all key communication partners at school (e.g. classroom teachers and teacher’s aides) are consistently using Key Word Sign within all interactions with the participant, and with their peers. Ideally, as many staff and children as possible should be able to understand and use Key Word Sign.

The use of Key Word Sign by everyone around the child helps to ensure that multimodal communication is being supported and validated by the whole school community.

To build the capacity of a participant with severe and multiple disabilities to understand and take advantage of opportunities to express their preferences and to exercise choice and control across everyday activities.

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs, or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Therapy intervention.
  5. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
Rationale for supports

Family and support staff of people with severe and multiple disabilities need to be using Key Word Sign and gesture in all their interactions – adding visual information, using slower, simpler and more consistent language in their interactions.

Family and support staff need to model Key Word Sign when interpreting the non-verbal communication signals of the participant, thereby offering them a mode that they could use to get their message across more successfully.
Family and support staff notice, acknowledge and accept attempts at signing, and any other special signs the person with communication difficulties may have developed, and recognise these as a valid communication attempts.

To support successful participation in the workplace.

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs, or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Therapy intervention.
  5. Provision of individualised resources to support and facilitate participation in everyday interactions using Key Word Sign.
Rationale for supports

A workplace needs to be set up to support the person with communication difficulties to understand and to be understood within the working environment, including social interactions, customer facing interactions, providing or receiving feedback etc.

To build the capacity of communication partners of the Participant to provide a greater number of more supportive communication development and participation opportunities. This is particularly relevant at times of transition, when new communication partners become part of the person’s communication environment.

Key Word Sign supports which may help to achieve the goals
  1. Attendance for family members, teachers, support workers and other key communication partners at a Key Word Sign workshop.
  2. Coaching and ongoing direct support to communication partners.
  3. Provision of resources to assist participants and their supporters to learn signs or improve signing accuracy and fluency.
  4. Therapy intervention.
Rationale for supports

Learning to communicate happens in enjoyable, meaningful, responsive interactions with people.

In order to learn Key Word Sign, the people who form the ‘communication environment’ of the person with communication difficulties (parents, grandparents, siblings, support workers, friends) must be using Key Word Sign themselves. A person is only able to learn to understand and use Key Word Sign if the people who communicate with them use Key Word Sign.

Communication partners need ongoing support to remember signs, learn new signs, sign accurately and fluently, and apply basic strategies that help a person with communication difficulties to develop their communication skills. While attending a workshop is a great first step, more supports are often needed so that communication partners are providing the communication opportunities that the person needs in order to expand their communication skills in response to increased communication related demands and expectations.

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