Social Care – Less.

Date of publication 12th March 2025

Forensic Statement and Linguistic Analysis can be of significant value and applied to everyday life with notable effect.

We can examine the written word but also examine language used in real time conversation via Discourse Analysis of the spoken word. This is much harder and takes a sufficient amount of practice and time to be able to do this ‘on the fly’ but can yield key information.

One recent example involved an at home elderly patient suffering from dementia who received daily home help from a Care Team. Part of this help required the team to get her up, get her washed and dressed and provide breakfast before clearing and tidying up. Afterwards, the Carer recorded and logged the visit notes.

On one visit, the Carer had written, ‘The patient went to get herself dressed. After this, I made her some breakfast.’

Would it surprise you to know that the patient hadn’t been dressed and was wearing her night clothes at lunch time?

When asked about this, the Care Company advised that the Carer had recorded that the patient had gotten herself dressed. This is not what was said, at no point did the Carer write this. The Carer noted an ‘intention’ that being where the patient, ‘went to get herself dressed’ which is an incomplete action. The Carer at no point said that the patient was dressed.

Did the Carer lie?

The Carer withheld information about an incomplete action. The rule is simple, if someone doesn’t say something, then we can’t say it for them.

The Carer was truthful but chose to omit key information which they were unable to commit to.

Deceivers rely on people to incorrectly ‘interpret’ their words in order to be successful in their deception whereas active listening can see through this deception.

Training in moving from every day, ‘dulled’ listening to ‘active’ listening can be the difference that makes the difference. It can provide you with advance notice of not only that which didn’t happen but also that which might be about to happen. It can also help to save a life,

For further information and training in understanding ‘the difference that makes the difference’ and how you can benefit from it, please contact us.

All blog subjects are identified, validated and written by the DDL Team. See www.ddlltd.com for more on Deception Detection Lab Ltd