Communication

This curriculum highlights a variety of communication challenges and offers skills to enhance effectiveness of home visitor and supervisor conversations and communications. Home visitors and supervisors will first learn about the stages of change— that is, the different points in the process of considering and enacting a change in one’s behaviors (e.g., using drugs). An important component of this curriculum is understanding how caregivers' language can reflect either change or sustain talk. After reviewing basic interviewing and listening skills, we discuss strategies to decrease reluctance and resistance and increase caregivers’ motivation to change. Interactive exercises and simulations will be used to create an active learning environment to develop basic skills in managing ambivalence, listening with head and heart, and creating productive working relationships. This is a module in the UMBC Home Visiting Certificate Training Program.