Nvq Unit 501

In my role as a service manager at upward care community care we specialise in adults with learning difficulties such as autism, mental health, and Down’s syndrome, we are also specialists with people with acquired brain injuries. Communication is a process that involves an exchange of information, thoughts, ideas and emotions. Communication effectively is crucial to forming meaningful relationships between staff and service users, carers and family and other health professionals.
The way we support effective communication within a company is by having up to date person centred plans and support plans, which involve interaction between myself, team leaders, people who use our service, staff, family and health proffesionals. Everyone with a learning disability is an individual and will have individual communicational needs. We face challenges on a day to day basis and in time new support staff develop and maintain ways to communicate with the people we support. In my experience as a support worker I worked with a young lady called Sam who had Down’s syndrome and lived her life through her favourite television programme, Eastenders. We used the characters and the problems they dealt with to explain to Sam the dangers of excessive alcohol and being out in the community by herself late at night, and the fact that not everybody that she will meet walking down the street “is nice”, because Sam had watched people being physically abused and mugged and thought that this was “real life”, it helped us to make her more aware of the dangers life could throw at her. As a service manager one of my jobs is to organise training for my staff in any areas that will help them in their main job role. On the communication side of things we do Makaton training, Makaton is a language programme using signs and symbols to help people communicate. People with learning difficulties may struggle to make themselves understood and to understand others. This can provoke intense