Specialist Communication Skills For Social Workers

This book gives students a solid understanding of the key issues involved in effective communication within social work settings. Now going into its second edition, it combines practical examples with a clear theoretical approach and demonstrates the subtleties of communication with specific and diverse service users and carers.

This book provides students with a solid understanding of the issues involved in effective communication within social work settings. It combines practice examples with a clear theoretical approach, demonstrating the subtleties of communication with service users and carers from a diverse range of social groups.

This new edition of a successful and well-established textbook has been reworked and updated to meet the needs of today's student and practitioner, ensuring that they are fully prepared to meet the needs of diverse service user groups and demonstrate how they are meeting professional standards.

Communication and Interpersonal Skills in Social Work are at the heart of effective social work practice. This book offers students a solid grounding in the core knowledge and skills of communication needed for effective practice. The book takes the key theories in communication and explains them in a systematic and practice-related way, essential for both undergraduate and postgraduate students to develop a critical understanding of the subject. This crucial fifth edition supports students with core communication skills by providing in-depth coverage closely interwoven with learning features that engage, stimulate and challenge. Working with children, adults and those with learning difficulties are all fundamental aspects of the book making it useful to students of all disciplines.

A step-by-step guide to developing effective communication skills with a diverse range of service users and professionals.

A vital part of a social worker's role is to build strong relationships based on confidence and trust, with people across all stages of the life course and from a broad range of backgrounds, in what can be extremely challenging circumstances. In this, her latest collaboration with Palgrave, bestselling social work author Karen Healy turns her attention to the key topic of communication and the importance of developing into a skilled communicator across all areas of professional practice. Split into two distinct sections, the text provides a thorough exploration of: - The foundations of effective communication in social work practice, focusing on the basic knowledge and skills that are essential to forming working alliances with service users in a broad range of practice situations; and - The specialised communication skills required to work with people with specific capacities and needs – from children, young people and older adults to people from diverse cultures and linguistic groups, those who experience trouble with verbal communication and those with mental health challenges. With helpful learning features such as practice exercises and chapter summary questions to enable you to review and reflect on what you have learned, this is an essential resource for social work students new to this complex area of practice.

This practical book enables students to develop key counselling skills that can help to enhance their practice and help to place the service-user at the centre of the decision making process. Relationship building will be a key area of the text and relevant counselling skills for achieving this in social work settings such as empathic responding will be illustrated in detail together with examples of dialogue and analysis of interventions. The role and importance of self-awareness will be discussed together with various exercises to develop the readers′ own knowledge of themselves.

Communication skills are fundamental to effective social work practice. Accessible and easy-to-read, Mastering Communication in Social Work is designed to help you develop these essential skills. It explores the basics of how communication works, the factors that influence how effectively you attend to and convey information, and how you can improve your communication. Particular attention is given to the challenges posed by difficult clients and the cultural dimensions of communication. Gast and Bailey put forward a reflective model for practice designed help you break bad habits and develop a wider repertoire of communication behaviours. Practice vignettes and exercises for the reader are included throughout. This book is essential reading for social work students, practitioners, managers, practice teachers and assessors, and trainers, as well as those in allied professions.