In health and social care, effective communication is a key skill that all professionals should have when working with families, carers, children and young people. Having this skill helps build trust and can also encourage the individual to use the services. Effective communication is essential when trying to establish and maintain relationships and is a process that involves listening, asking questions, responding and understanding. However, there are many barriers that can affect the effectiveness of communication. Some examples of these barriers could be: language, personality, visual or hearing impairment, or disability. To overcome these barriers there have been many advances in strategies that can help in situations where communication is not effective, a strategy is a method or plan that can help someone or something succeed in achieving a goal or result. There are various strategies that can be used to overcome a barrier in communication, the first one I will explain is a hearing aid and as the name suggests it is a hearing aid. Hearing aids are primarily used to improve the hearing and speech of people who have lost some hearing due to damage caused to the hair cells (sensory cells) in the inner ear. This damage can be caused by; aging, injuries due to noise, side effects of medications or diseases. The hearing aid is an electro-acoustic device that is generally placed behind or in the wearer's ear, however there are some hearing aids that can be implanted into the brain. Electroacoustic is a term used to explain how the hearing aid works, the electro section is because it is electronic and acoustic is used because the device amplifies the sound. It is used by a small... medium of paper... messages from one language to another. As in the case of an interpreter, it is used when someone tries to communicate with a person who does not have English as their native language, this could be because they need an interpreter or because they prefer to have one in the situation they find themselves in .Works Quoted http://www.hearingdirect.com/http://deafness.about.com/cs/hoth/a/haidtypes.htm http://www.hearingaidworld.com/http://www.nidcd. nih.gov/ health/hearing/hearingaid.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_aid#Body_worn_aidshttp://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/modern/hearing-aid.htmhttp://hiring.monster. co.uk/ hr/hr-best-practices/workforce-management/employee-pay-benefits/how-can-training-courses-be-used-as-a-company-benefit.aspxhttp://www.disabled- world.com/ assistive devices/hearing/hearing-aids.phpWhy things suck: Hearing Aids: WIRED MAGAZINE: PROBLEM 16.02: