Communicative Potential of Future Social Workers

Abstract

The article highlights the topical issue of communicative potential of future social workers in their professional activities. Modern requirements for a social worker require ablity to interact with various groups of clients: children, adolescents, youth, the elderly or people with special needs, deviant or delinquent behavior, addicted to psychoactive substances, victims of violence, war, natural disasters. disasters, prisoners, etc. Social workers must be able to communicate effectively with representatives of various target groups in the social sphere, in order to provide social services. They are become skilled for conflict-free communication, self-control, capable to empathize, to listen and prove point of view. All these professional competencies can be reflected as the communicative potential of a social worker. For the purpose of empirical research of communicative potential psychodiagnostic methods were applied: Diagnosis of the need for communication (U.Orlov), Can you listen? (E.Rogov), Study of the level of communicative control (M.Schneider), Identification of communicative and organizational skills (B.Fedoryshyn), Determining the behavioral style in a conflict situation (K.Thomas). Based on psychodiagnostic methods, it was found that future social workers have high indicators of communication needs, listening skills, level of communication control, level of communication skills and the predominance of average level of organizational skills. Among the styles of behavior in a conflict situation, the dominant are cooperation and compromise, which indicates a desire to meet the needs of the communication partner. The data indicate a high level of development of the communicative potential of future social workers and their readiness for professional activity in the chosen field.