As a Community Support Worker, you will be working with people who have mental health issues, substance abuse problems, developmental challenges, or physical disabilities. To successfully help others, you need to utilize microskills during your sessions. Microskills are basic counselling skills which help you connect with a person and create an environment that benefits them. All microskills are important as they assist in helping a person in different ways.

If you’re considering community support worker training, read on to learn using microskills throughout your career.

1. Observe Your Patients to Understand Them

To understand a person means to understand their mental and physical condition because, without this, you cannot assist them. Observing them involves examining their body language, facial expressions, and how they speak and interact. However, it also involves understanding from their perspective.

During community support worker training, you will learn about what different body languages indicate, how your client’s views on the world impact their psyche, and how to read the current condition of someone. For example, you will learn that creating physical barriers or avoiding eye contact are signs of negative body language and could indicate they are in a negative mental space.

2. Use Attending Behaviour During Your Community Support Worker Career

Attending behaviour is showing interest in what a person is saying and communicating a willingness to help them. Body language is the best example of this. Focus on making eye contact with the other person, face the other person, and lean towards them to show you are listening intently. Attending behaviour allows a person to feel more comfortable with you, making them more likely to open up to you.

3. Ask the Right Questions at the Right Time

Asking questions at the right time during a session will help your client open up to you. Providing you with a better understanding of their current state. During your community support worker diploma program, you will learn that there are two main types of questions you can ask. These are open-ended and closed-ended (‘yes or no’) questions. 

Open-ended questions generally allow for longer answers and give a person a platform to speak. These questions can help an individual explore the situation for themselves. Closed-ended questions can be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ They gather specific information or clarify something. During your practicum, you will put into practice asking questions to gather information. However, avoid asking too many questions. With the practice you’ll gain during your practicum, you will be well-equipped to ask effective questions when working with people.

4. Use Focusing To Drive Discussion

Focusing is a microskill that involves directing the flow of discussion using themes to gather relevant information. Often, there are several contributing reasons why a person is struggling, and asking questions about specific themes allows you to understand if and how they interlink with the current situation. There are 7 different focusing themes, namely individual focus, problem focus, family focus, mutuality focus, interviewer focus, cultural focus, and other focus. As you go through your community support worker training, you will learn to utilize these focusing points to drive discussion and develop understanding. You can better understand how to assist someone and build a mutually beneficial and trusting relationship.

5. Utilize Confrontation Sparingly

Confrontation is not about disagreement or accusations in this case. It is about helping the client realize something they previously overlooked or avoided. the key is to do this gently. An example of an effective method of using confrontation  is to describe the person’s words and how they don’t align with their actions. 

The person may have been scared or perhaps subconsciously avoided an action. However, try to highlight the aspect they are missing. This helps them realize where they may have gone wrong and how they can grow from this realization. During your training, you will learn about confrontation techniques and how to use them correctly to avoid a tense situation.

Are you interested in a community support worker career? 

Contact Discovery Community College to learn how you can get started.