Communication skills are at the heart of working with any group of individuals who are experiencing difficulty. Whatever the role, communication skills will be a key factor in the service users experience of their engagement with treatment services.
Two-Day Course
This course will largely use the same material as the one-day, with more time being spent on each topic. The second day will be spent recapping the key elements with a lot of the time on the second day spent in focused skills practice sessions with structured feedback.
One-Day Course (Introduction to Communication skills)
This module is designed to provide the learners with an understanding of what it means to communicate effectively in the context of working with substance users.
It will start by introducing Rogers core conditions and go on to examine "non-verbal communication" and "active listening" noting in what ways these can impact communication. We will then look at why accurate information is always important, learning ways of checking for accuracy.
A variety of skills such as paraphrasing, reflecting, repeating, the use minimal prompts as well as open and closed questions will be discussed and rehearsed.
Learners will explore the concept of empathy, exploring how we may be experienced as "empathic" through the use of communication skills.
We will also examine what can get in the way of effective communication.
Throughout the day there will be short experiential exercises.
The learning objectives for this training are:
One Day
• Understand the term “Communication Skills”
• Understand what is meant by “Non–verbal communication”
• Understand what constitutes active listening
• Understands the value of checking for accuracy
• Describe an open question and what its purpose is.
• Describe a closed question and what its purpose is.
• Understands the concept of “Empathy as a skill”
Two Day
• To gain further practical experience by role playing sessions with structured feedback from peers and trainer
Substance misuse training and development