Principles of communication in adult social care settings

Outcome : Understand why communication is important in adult social care settings.

People communicate for a variety of reasons, but these can be summarised into the following headings:

• To connect with others, or to build relationships. This is important to support or comfort another or to convey affection. It could be seen that communication for a human forms a basic need as important as food or shelter.

• To share information or facts. This could be either to give or receive information. Included within this category would be to give instructions, announcements or news.

• To give another person your thoughts or views on a subject. By sharing your thoughts with another person it gives you the possibility to develop those thoughts or ideas into actions.

• To persuade another person to do something. This could be a task or to affect their beliefs.

• For entertainment, such as telling a joke or a story, creation of a movie or just conversing with friends.

• General routine communication, such as saying "Hi" or "How are you?" This is sometimes referred to as small talk.