Supports rights, independence & choice

Making Space for Someone's Voice and Choice

A CORA decision skill · about a 4-minute read

Most people who take over do it kindly, and quickly, and because they are trying to help. That is exactly what makes it hard to notice.

Open Communication means

Make space for the person's voice and choice, don't take over, pressure, or assume.

What it looks like on shift

  • You ask, then wait. The waiting is the skill.
  • Somebody uses a communication device and you give them the time it takes rather than guessing ahead of them.
  • You offer two real options rather than one option and a formality.

What it looks like when it slips

  • Finishing somebody's sentence because you are fairly sure you know the end of it.
  • Asking a question while already doing the thing.
  • Reading a long silence as no answer when it is a slow one.

Being understood is not an extra

If English is not somebody's first language, a professional interpreter is not a nicety you get to when there is time. Family members should not be interpreting anything sensitive, and children should not be interpreting at all. Not about health, not about money, not about a complaint. Booking one is a normal part of the job, not a fuss.

And a person's communication device is their voice. It needs to be with them, charged, and within reach. A device flat on the bench or in a cupboard is somebody being kept quiet, whatever anybody intended by it. Checking it at the start of a shift takes about a minute.

Three things to try on your next shift

  1. Count to ten in your head after you ask something. It will feel far too long. It usually is not.
  2. Notice how many of your questions have only one comfortable answer, and rewrite one of them.
  3. For one task this shift, ask how they want it done rather than checking whether your way is alright.

When to stop rather than push on

If something is being decided that genuinely matters to the person, and you are not confident they followed it, that is a stop rather than a proceed. Get the interpreter, get the device, get the person who knows them best, or get it moved to another day. A decision somebody did not understand is not their decision, and writing that they agreed does not make it one.

More in Supports rights, independence & choice:

  • Hold the LineKeep the person's rights and choices steady under pressure (family, org, routine, peers).
  • Honour the RiskSupport dignity of risk and informed choice even when you'd choose differently.
  • Step BackBuild independence, do with, not for; resist over-helping.

All ten decision skills →