Communication skills

These e-Learning resources are freely available to all users. Through audio, video and interactive uses of technology, they provide the user with an engaging look at the principles of good communication skills and how to apply these to practice.

Click on a title below to open the resource.

Screenshot	Title	Key areas covered
	Overview of communication skills in social work	The importance of effective communication, communication in practice, underpinning knowledge, principles and skills.
	Forming and maintaining relationships with service users, carers, professionals and others	Importance of relationships in social work, self knowledge, personal qualities and professional attributes that aid relationship building
	Providing information and explaining	developing a shared agenda with the service user, planning and preparation, establishing and agreeing purpose, explaining and providing information
	Gathering information	Observation skills, listening skills, question types, creative ways of gathering information
	Barriers to communication	Understanding factors that can disrupt or confuse communication, planning to reduce communication barriers.
	Particular communication needs	Introduction to particular communication needs, sensory and cognitive impairment, understanding and working with communication needs
	Communicating in challenging situations	What is meant by ‘challenging situations’, defensive behaviour including, silence, mistrust and aggression, breaking bad news
	Using play and the creative arts to communicate with children and young people	Why play based methods can help children communicate, how to use visual imagery, creative writing, stories and music as communication tools,
	Communicating through action and other means of communication	Practical support and help, communicating at a distance, record keeping, presentation skills
	Communication across cultural and social differences	Dilemmas that can arise across cultural and social divides, the impact of identity, beliefs and culture on communication

Who they are suitable for:

These resources are suitable for students studying towards the social work degree, educators and practising social workers.

About the authors:

Michelle Lefevre

Michelle is a lecturer in social work and social care at the University of Sussex where she is the Director of post-qualifying programmes for social work practice in children’s services settings. She is also a qualified and registered social worker and arts psychotherapist, carrying out individual therapy with children and adults and undertaking expert witness assessments for the family courts.  Her recent research has particularly focused on communication between children and their social workers. This has included a knowledge review for SCIE on how communication skills with children should best be taught to social workers, two follow-up journal articles for Child and family social work and a SWAP-funded dissemination project.  She has recently co-edited an anthology for BAAF on direct work with children and young people and is currently writing a book for the Policy Press on Communicating with children and young people.

Sally Richards

Sally is a lecturer in social work and Director of post-graduate research in the school of health and social care at the University of Reading. She is a qualified and registered social worker and a former probation officer. Her research and publications have focused on older people in social and health care settings. She is particularly interested in communication between practitioners and older people, communication through life story and narrative and in spirituality and old age. Sally was co-author of a SCIE knowledge review on learning and teaching communication skills in social work education and a follow up journal article on ethical dilemmas encountered in teaching communication skills in the current practice context.

Pamela Trevithick

Pamela is a principal lecturer and former course leader of the BSc in social work at the University of Gloucestershire. Since qualifying in 1980, she has worked in a variety of statutory and non statutory settings and is the author of the best-selling text Social work skills: A practice handbook. She is also the first co-author of a SCIE knowledge review on learning and teaching communication skills in social work education, co-editor of the journal Groupwork and on two editorial boards: Journal of social work practice and Journal of social work practice and Communities and children Australia. Pamela regularly gives talks/presentations on social work knowledge and skills, particularly the importance of communication skills within social work.

Acknowledgements:

SCIE would like to thank the following people:

1. Our peer reviewers: Juliet Koprowska, Bernard Moss, Helen Coleman and Denise Wright.
2. The students who took part in our user trials

Technical development:

Programming and graphic design by Cimex Ltd.

Copyright 

All material in these e-learning resources, including text, graphics, photographs, video and audio is copyright of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), unless otherwise stated. Use of these resources, and import of the resources into learning management systems, for educational purposes is freely permitted, but commercial use of this learning resource is not authorised unless permission is first obtained from SCIE.

Images and audio

The majority of the images and voices used in this resource are those of actors.  This approach has been adopted to protect the identities of the service users and carers whose accounts have been drawn upon or the accounts have been based on situations indicative of the events or issues being covered.