Culture, identity and personal beliefs have a profound impact on the content and process of communication. When people from different cultures, backgrounds or belief systems communicate, it is easy for misunderstandings to arise. This resource uses five case scenarios to provide examples of the kinds of challenges and dilemmas social workers experience as they communicate across social and cultural divides.
When using services, parents have reported that they encounter discriminatory attitudes from some professionals on the basis that they are poor. This learning object seeks to help you understand the positive steps that can be taken to building good relationships with parents in poverty.
This resource looks at the benefits that are gained from the relationships that are built within social work. Using the voices of service users, carers and workers will be possible to understand how the relationships that were created helped them to deal with the difficulties they faced. This resource will allow the understanding of the importance of relationships in social work and the personal attributes needed to form and maintain positive working relationships.
Poverty affects children from very different backgrounds and discrimination on the basis of disability, race or immigration status mean that some sections of the population are significantly over represented among poor families. However many families living in poverty also report being discriminated on the basis of being poor, and this being compounded when involved with child welfare services.
Practitioners often have to undertake assessments of children and their families who are living in poverty. To help improve the consistency and quality of these assessments the Government introduced the Framework for the Assessment of children in need and their families (DH, 2000). This learning object lets you explore the framework and its many dimensions. With the help of Barbara, a social worker, you will use the framework to assess the Johnson family, gaining an understanding of how the framework can help you in assessing the needs of children and families in your daily role.
This resource starts with a quiz and a short case study to help the user understand the complexities of defining and identifying impairment as well as the difficulties faced by people who have these impairments. Then it will be able to explore four different scenarios which present tips on working with particular communication needs of service users.