We are pleased to announce that we have become the first Martial Arts club in the Country to be awarded “Makaton Friendly status.” This is an important award for us as it highlights our commitment to being an inclusive sports club for our community.
This step is the latest initiative that we have undertaken to ensure we remain a leading supporter and advocate of equity and equality in the Martial Arts world. We have a program in place that helps our coaches to learn some Makaton skills. We then use these skills in classes helping our members to learn and understand different methods of communication.
Communication is a vital life skill for all of us. Most activities that we undertake rely us on being able to communicate with others. Imagine going to school, work, playing or going out socially and not being able to interact with others. How difficult would that be?
Makaton uses both signs and symbols to help people to communicate with one another, it was developed to support spoken language as the signs and symbols are used in conjunction with it.
Currently over 100,000 children and adults within the UK use Makaton to communicate. Makaton is suitable for individuals with communication needs including learning disabilities, autism, developmental delays and dementia. Makaton can also be used those people who are learning English as an additional language.
