The Importance of Communication Partnerships: A Study to Investigate the Communicative Exchanges Between Staff and Adults with Learning Disabilities

A small‐scale study was conducted to investigate the extent to which the verbal communication skills used by adults with learning disabilities were complemented by those used by their keyworkers during communicative exchanges. The setting was a community‐based day centre. The number of information carrying words (ICWs) used by keyworkers with their clients was measured in two contexts: (A) looking at selected pictures; (B) free conversational exchange. These were compared with the verbal comprehension level of each client, also measured in ICWs, as assessed by the administration of the Derbyshire Language Scheme: Rapid Screening Test of Comprehension (Knowles & Masidlover, 1982). The results revealed that major differences existed between the communication skills used by keyworkers, and the comprehension levels of the…