Effective communication and interpersonal skills are important to understanding and achieving the victim's perspective and promoting the values and principles of hate crime casework and support. Such skills are demonstrated in interactions with a client through valuing the person and story (by believing, listening and giving time) and letting the client know that they have been understood in the casework interaction (by reflecting, paraphrasing and summarising). Confident and appropriate use of interpersonal skills forms and sustains helping relationships. Practitioners will spend a large amount of time communicating with victims, advocates, agencies, local political leaders and potentially the media.

Casework practice involves working with a range of people, all whom have different positions of power and authority. A practitioner has to be an effective communicator and draw on the skills used in everyday interactions. However, the key difference between everyday and practitioner interactions is that within the latter, the focus is on professional communication, which has a deliberate strategy that focuses the practitioner on being aware of their purpose and ensuring that the use of communication skills supports the achievement of that purpose (Healy, 2012: 22).

Communication as learned behaviour

Interpersonal and communication skills include listening, non-verbal communication, observation and verbal and counselling skills (Neville, 2009: 5–6; Healy, 2012: 22). Communication is learnt behaviour (Allen and Langford, 2008) and, as such, can often be taken for granted and go unexamined (Koprowska, 2014: 3) in relation to effectiveness or biases. Given the diversity of people who may report a hate crime, being open and aware of our own communication biases and how and when we need to adapt to respond to difference and diversity is important to building a transformative relationship.

The cultural theorist Bourdieu uses the term ‘habitus’ to describe taken-for-granted aspects of our culture, including our ways of thinking, feeling and communicating (Thompson, 2003: 21–2, cited in Koprowska, 2014: 4). We become aware of our habitus in our interactions with people who have a different habitus. This is crucial to a caseworker increasing their self-awareness and responding to unexpected situations where our communication skills need to adapt or respond. The caseworker cannot take communication for granted and may need to learn new ways to both express themselves and listen to others unfamiliar to them.