COMMUNICATION


As I said in my first post, good communication skills are not always a recruitment priority. I should put it another way: since most residents are English, fluency in English really should be a non-negotiable requirement. Hell's bells, it's bad enough for disabled people without them having to struggle with a language barrier -- or indeed, a comprehension barrier -- when attempting to explain what problems they need addressing, even more so if it is an urgent problem. Imagine lying in a bath while two carers, neither of them English, wrestle with the language, convinced that while lying in the bath, you want some toast! Spelling words was useless: they didn't recognize the word. It took some inventive thinking before they finally understood: the problem concerned your toes!

A lighter note. You know, nursing homes and care homes shelter a wide range of people and 'normal' people -- that's everybody else (normal? Ha!) -- often forget that among us lurk some very subversive characters. I exclude myself, of course. And don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm talking exclusively about residents. We have a number of rcarers here -- many from agencies on an "as needed" basis -- who, since raw intelligence is an inherited attribute, have DNA that you would kill to keep out of your own family gene pool. Does that make me judgemental and snobbish? Oh well. (See the shrug.)

It is rather like school really. You are sharing premises with a bunch of strangers with whom you have nothing in common except the need for care and have no control over who gets to be a carer. All you need to do to survive is simply accept that situation and play the cards you are dealt, as it were. Okay, some things can be hard to stomach: your table companions may include somebody French -- how bad can it get after that?

Well, for a start, the carers putting you to bed or giving you a bath may not be, shall we say, your favourite people. You may have problems with their manner, their attitude to you/the job in hand, their competence (or lack of) or their ability to understand you. Or all of those things! I shudder sometimes for those who have their own communication problems. You don't want to upset them though because those very same carers will have easy access to your private and secret places when you are up in the sling! If not today, some other day. Best not tempt providence, eh? I don't say that with any bitterness, you understand, as if I was recalling in acute detail any particular gruelling incident, I hasten to add.