Christine is Community Engagement Development Manager at Options, leading their Community Team and supporting and empowering people with disabilities to live their lives to the full.
This conversation asks a deceptively simple question: “What do our everyday words reveal about power, dignity, and what we think ‘good support’ looks like?”
Language is never neutral. It can turn people into ‘cases’, ‘units’, or ‘room numbers’, or it can recognise them as whole, unique humans.
And once you notice it, you can’t unhear it.
‘Swear words’ in social care
Christine talks about the ‘swear words’ used at Options, not because they’re shocking, but because they quietly carry power dynamics. Words like service user, client, allow or let. They sound normal in the system. But, they can reinforce the idea that support is something done to people, not with them.
Options builds this into culture from day one: how we talk about people is part of how we treat people.
The moment that matters: the pause
You don’t need perfect language to start. Christine’s benchmark is simpler and more human. She looks for the pause.
When someone says, ‘I don’t know the right way to say this, but…’ it shows they’re thinking, trying, learning. That’s the doorway to change.
The goal isn’t to become the ‘language police’. It’s to model better words, be gentle, and keep the relationship intact while you challenge the system.
When ‘professional’ language does harm
The episode digs into how labels can replace curiosity. A person becomes ‘a fabricator’. Someone is described through ‘challenging behaviour’. A story is dismissed instead of understood.
Christine shares how misunderstandings, especially around relationships, communication, and education, can get translated into deficit labels that stick.
When that happens, language doesn’t just describe reality. It creates it.
Risk isn’t only about harm
One of the strongest themes is risk, and how the word is often used as a stop sign. ‘We can’t, because the risk assessment says no.’
Christine flips it: there’s also risk of loneliness, isolation, missed opportunities, and a smaller life. At Options, risk assessments are reframed as MOST: Maximising Outcomes Safely Together, a shift from ‘avoid’ to ‘how do we make this possible?’ Same function. Different mindset.
A small word change with a big impact
Christine tells a story from a leadership meeting. The team kept referring to an empty room in a supported living home as a ‘void’. She challenged it. What did it become? A ‘spare room’.
But more importantly, the conversation widened. When the team spoke to the people who lived there, the room wasn’t a void at all; it was still ‘Tom’s room’. Tom had died. The language had been erasing grief and relationships.
A single word change led to a more human process: involving the people who lived there in deciding who should move in next, and even creating a ‘spare room’ style advert to share with commissioners.
That’s what language can unlock.
The place to start: co-production and values
Christine’s advice for organisations who want to do this better is practical: co-production. Not as a buzzword, but as a belief: without you, this won’t work.
And values – being clear on what you won’t compromise on: dignity, contribution, uniqueness, relationship. If you start from values, language follows. If you start from the system, people get lost.
To end, Christine names three words she wants to see more of in social care: Creativity. Curiosity. Advocacy. Because the best support isn’t transactional. It’s relational, persistent, imaginative, and always centred on what the person wants.
