ABSTRACT
Social work relies fundamentally on good communication, on empathetic but purposeful talking and listening. In the process of developing supportive relationships, communication with clients aims to gain information, iden tifying and assessing problems and making the right decisions. In order to do this effectively and successfully social workers’ communication skills are crucial. These skills include, among other things, the ability to listen carefully, to ask the right questions, to give clear advice and to pay attention to all the relevant details in conversations with clients. Communication with clients forms the basis for making judgements about what actions to take. Hence, developing communication skills is one of the core goals in social work education. In a recent review of teaching communication skills in social work by the Social Care Institute for Excellence in the UK, communication is seen as essential to social work:
Learning to communicate in a professional manner in a variety of contexts with people from a diverse range of backgrounds can be difficult, but it is a fundamental skill without which it is difficult to perform many other social work tasks or, perhaps, the social work role at all.
(Trevithick et al. 2004: 1)