Challenges and Communication Strategies for Social Care Workers

This essay delves into the challenges that social care workers encounter when communicating with individuals who have disabilities. It highlights the importance of effective communication for these individuals and discusses ways to overcome common barriers. Examples from New Zealand's government initiatives are provided to illustrate successful community engagement with people with disabilities.

Running Head: Communication Relationship Management
Communication and
Relationship
Management
Communication and Disability
Sumit Kumar
3/6/2018
Student Id: 4310875
Assignment 3

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People often communicate with others in a day. They communicate one on one or over phone
call or rarely in writing too. But people who communicate with the disabled people, they should
be treated individually. Also, they should be treated equally and with respect (Government,
2018). There are always some challenges faced when a social worker starts to communicate
with the disable people. Communication challenges are common for most of the people with
disability and the practitioners always need a strong theoretical basis for their work. These
people also must ensure that the practice they perform should always be flexible enough for the
effective response according to the client group. Social workers communicating style will always
differ as they are communicating with lots of people with different disabilities. A few people are
very talkative while others have to communicate with no verbal communication (Mencap,
2016).
Social care workers need to have effective communication skills so as to work with the different
range of disable people whom they meet in health and social care (Mitchell, Franklin, Greco,
& Bell, 2009). This essay will be emphasizing on the challenges a social care worker goes
through while communicating with the disable people with various disabilities. Also the
solutions to overcome these challenges are also discussed.
Effective Communication is important for the collaboration of the social care worker and the
disabled (Miller & Ashcroft, 2016). Many factors affect the individual’s ability in
communicating in an effective way. These factors are usually known as barriers of
communication as they hinder the ability of the person to send or understand the message.
Sensory Deprivation Disability: Impairment of vision and hearing can be a challenge to effective
communication. Social workers should always be aware of the extra needs for communication
when want to communicate with the people with such impairments. Sight or hearing issues
means that signs are not helpful at all as they cannot be seen by the person with disability. Also
leaflets cannot be read and conversations they are unable to hear. Example: Cerebral palsy or
Down syndrome type of conditions usually tends to limit the ability of communication of a
person (Collins, 2010).
Different Culture and Foreign language: New Zealand is a country which has multi cultures. It
has different ethnic groups and all groups speak different languages. English might easily be

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second or third language and people might or might not understand English. In case if the health
and social care worker just display or produce information in English language, many people
might feel difficult to understand the complete information in this language. If they will not
understand then they might not be able to share what they need services for. Different groups of
people with different cultures understand the non verbal behavior and their sense of humor might
differ. All this can lead to misunderstanding of the messages which might make no sense for the
person who is at the receiving end of it (Jureddi & Brahmaiah, 2016).
Dialect: Dialect is known to be as the version of the language. English speaking people use
Glaswegian dialect or liverpudlian dialect. They will pronounce the same words differently.
They might use some words which are used locally or in a very particular area they are living in.
Now the person who is not of the same locality will never understand the dialect.
Emotional Difficulties: Conditions like stroke or depression or other mental issues might impact
the individual’s ability of communication. Sending ability or receiving ability might be impacted
in case of such conditions. In the same way, if the person is aggressive or short tempered or sad,
it will be very difficult for that person to understand what is being conveyed.
Use of Jargons and Slangs: Technical language which is known by the industry or area is known
as Jargons. Jargons are used by social care workers for the fast communication. Slangs is
informal language used by youth mostly. Those people who do not use such kind of jargons or
slangs cannot understand them as well.
Health Problems: Issues with ongoing health can make a person wish to not talk to others at all.
Medication might affect the ability of people to speak as well as understand any communication.
Environment Issues: Physical environment also affect the person’s ability to communicate.
People with heart problems might get affected by the environment. Poor lighting can impact the
non verbal communication which could reduce the hearing disabled person ability to read lips
(Gilson & Dymond, 2012).
Learning Disability: Disability of learning reduces the ability of an individual in understanding
the complex information or even in learning new skills. The severity of the disability determines
how difficult it will be for the disabled person to understand communication. Example: A few

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service users with deep disabilities might not be capable of speaking while others might simply
feel other problems in reading. Few might experience aphasia which impacts their ability to
understand the language fully and effectively.
Challenging Behavior: This type of behavior involves destructive type of behavior like furniture
breaking, injury to self or stripping off etc. Users who use the service have learning disabilities,
they often display this type of behavior as they are the ones who experience problems in
communication and that leads to irritation (Drainoni, Hood, Tobias, & Bachman, 2006).
The challenges that a social care worker faces in communicating with the disabled can be
overcome in a few ways. Result of that is that good relations can easily be formed with the
udders of the service and their family members. Also information can easily be shared then.
Using special equipments: Huge number of communication aids is always available for the help
of service users for overcoming these difficulties. This type of aid can be anything which makes
the communication easy and quick for the users. It can be as simple as pen or paper and pictures
or may be a few electronic devices. These special equipments are helpful for the users those who
have speech impairment or those who have no speech at all.
Special Language: Many social workers use special language for communicating with the users
in a more efficient way. One type of that is a sign language in which use of hands moments is
done. Facial expressions are another gestures and body language too (Lww, 2008).
Use of Translator: Translators can always help those people who do not speak English as their
first speaking language. During past years, translators were family members but in today’s
world, this thing is discouraged because of the confidentiality reasons. Example: Mother who is
interpreting for her daughter might not want her daughter to know that she has cancer.
Using an Advocate:
An advocate is the person who tries to understand the needs of the service users and later speaks
on the users behalf. These types of people are needed when the user has any disability and it is
difficult for them to speak and make the social care worker understand the needs. Advocate can
be a family member or any representative from the organization.

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Creating a favorable Environment:
Environment should always be apt with noise levels for effective deliverance of communication.
Background should be quiet. Lighting should be very bright so that the visually impaired can
read the lips.
New Zealand has made changes for making communication easy for disabled people with the
help of use of internet. Websites of government organizations are all accessible to the range of
New Zealanders which also includes people with disabilities. Examples are: Descriptive text for
images and videos and also in case of audio hearings which explains the text nicely and
accurately. Then the background is also colored so that it is easy to see.
For Vision impairment text is enlarged or the size of the cursor is increased for easy navigation.
For multiple impairments i.e., deaf and blind, use of ICOM Bluetooth connection on Smartphone
is also linked to the hearing aid. Internet also offers the users to advocate for the people with
disabilities. Example: Submissions are made on disability topics and emails are also sent to the
organizations about the same (Smith, 2016). In New Zealand, the access for building social
environment is one of the needs for enabling people to live independently. The government of
New Zealand wants that disable people should be able to easily access the transport, facilities of
public etc. For ensuring that this happens, CRPD recognizes the standards might need a little
development and monitoring (NewZealandGovenment, 2017).
Communication is that with which one can make another understand anything. With people who
have disabilities, it becomes a little difficult to communicate with them as they are impaired with
some or the other ability. Appropriate resources should be available in order to make the users
understand things. This essay explored the challenges that are faced by the social care worker in
order to communicate with the people with disabilities. Also, the discussion about overcoming
those challenges is done. A few examples are also shared about the government of New Zealand
and the measures that are taken for the impaired people of the country (Boardman, Berna, &
Hollins, 2014).

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References
Boardman, L., Berna, J., & Hollins, S. (2014). Communicating with people with intellectual
disabilities: a guide for general psychiatrists. Advances in psychiatric treatment , 20, 27-
36.
Collins. (2010). Communication in Health and Social Care. Retrieved March 6, 2018, from
http://resources.collins.co.uk: http://resources.collins.co.uk/free/BTECHSCunit1.pdf
Drainoni, M. L., Hood, E. L., Tobias, C., & Bachman, S. S. (2006). Cross-Disability Experiences
of Barriers to Health-Care Access. Journal of Disability Policies Studies , 17 (2), 101-
115.
Gilson, C. L., & Dymond, S. K. (2012). Barriers Impacting Students with Disabilities at a
Barriers Impacting Students with Disabilities at a. Journal of Postsecondary Education
and Disability , 25 (2), 103-118.
Government, Q. (2018). Better communication. Retrieved March 6, 2018, from qld.gov.au:
https://www.qld.gov.au/disability/community/communicating
Jureddi, D. N., & Brahmaiah, N. (2016). BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION.
JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE , 3 (2).
Lww. (2008). Overcoming Communication Barriers. Retrieved March 6, 2018, from lww.com:
http://downloads.lww.com/wolterskluwer_vitalstream_com/sample-content/
9780781799805_Nield-Gehrig/samples/13747_CH3.pdf
Mencap. (2016). Communicating with people with a learning disability. Retrieved March 6,
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https://www.mencap.org.uk/sites/default/files/2016-12/Communicating%20with
%20people_updated%20%281%29.pdf

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Miller, W. A., & Ashcroft, R. (2016). Challenges Faced by Social Workers as Members of
Interprofessional Collaborative Health Care Teams. Health & Social Work , 41 (2).
Mitchell, W., Franklin, A., Greco, V., & Bell, M. (2009). Working with Children with Learning
Disabilities. Retrieved March 6, 2018, from http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/11165/1/SWEd_-_communicate_non-verbally.pdf
NewZealandGovenment. (2017). A Guide to Community Engagement with People with
Disabilities. Retrieved March 6, 2018, from health.govt.nz:
https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/guide-community-
engagement-people-disabilities-2nd-edn-apr17.pdf
Smith, P. K. (2016). New Zealanders with disabilities and their Internet use. Retrieved March 6,
2018, from icdc.aut.ac.nz: https://icdc.aut.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/73439/New-
Zealanders-with-disabilities-and-their-internet-use.pdf