What is communication?
The importance of communication in context of health and social care setting is the individual needs of the service users. Individual may have specific needs and communication is the only tool available to discover their needs. There are mainly three types of communication skills, expressive skills, listening skills and skills for managing the overall process of communication. The basic fundamental of all these types of communication is emotional skills.
• Expressive skills are required to convey message to others through words, facial expressions and body language.
• Listening skills are skills that are used to obtain messages or information from others.
These help to clearly understand what a person feels and thinks about you or understand the other person closely. Skills for managing the overall process of communication help to recognize the required information and develop a strong hold on the existing rules of communication and interaction.
Communication skills are crucial for establishing effectual and reverential relationships with service users. These skills also play a major role when working with colleagues and other social workers for making decisions and assessments.
Types of communication
Verbal communication is further divided into written and oral communication. The oral communication refers to the spoken words in the communication process. Oral communication can either be face-to-face communication or a conversation over the phone or on the voice chat over the Internet. Spoken conversations or dialogs are influenced by voice modulation, pitch, volume and even the speed and clarity of speaking. The other type of verbal communication is written communication. Written communication can be either via snail mail, or email. The effectiveness of written communication depends on the style of writing, vocabulary used, grammar, clarity and precision of language.
Non-verbal communication includes the overall body...