MARCH 2004 SPOTLIGHT:

CULTURAL COMPETENCE

The United States is more culturally diverse than ever before, due in part to the “new immigration ” wave that began in the 1960s.  While the majority of earlier refugees and immigrants came from Western Europe, today newcomers from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, or the former Soviet Union bring a broad range of cultures, languages, and backgrounds.

The diversity is particularly evident in our children.  One child in five is a refugee or immigrant  or the child of refugee or immigrant parents.  Current demographic trends leave no doubt that the cultural diversity of this country, especially among its youth, will continue to grow.

These changing demographic patterns impact access to services, and the potential negative long-term effects of cultural and linguistic barriers to services for our next generation have prompted a growing focus among health and social service providers, child welfare workers, teachers, administrators, and ethnic community leaders on the need for cultural competence.

Cultural competence - the knowledge, abilities, and skills that enable respectful and effective interactions with newcomers from different ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds - helps bridge the gap between cultural minorities and mainstream institutions. It is a process of mutual learning and collaboration, building on specific attitudes, practices, and policies that accommodate and reinforce the strengths of both cultures.

Although substantially more resources became available on culturally competent practice during the last decade, including self-assessment checklists and other tools (see our Featured Search), most service providers and agencies struggle to integrate culturally competent practice into their structure, programming, and services.  BRYCS’ needs assessment project, Community Conversations, found a serious “disconnect” between public child welfare agencies, refugee communities, and refugee-serving agencies.

Most child welfare workers and supervisors in that study, and the resulting Cross-Service Trainings, reported knowing very little about the backgrounds, cultures, and experiences of the often large refugee communities in their area, and they expressed a strong interest in learning about and working more closely with these communities.  (BRYCS is now making six mini-grants available for local service providers to conduct cross-service trainings.)

Public policy reflects this same disconnect.  In a recent study by BRYCS of child welfare standards with relevance for practice with refugees, few policies were found to support culturally competent practice.  BRYCS works with other technical assistance providers, national, state, and local governments and service providers, with specific initiatives to make policies more sensitive to the needs of refugee youth, children, and their families.

For services to be truly effective, cultural competence must be integrated at the individual, agency, community, and policy levels.  A growing body of research shows services become more effective, and outcomes improve, when this happens.

For additional resources on this topic, see this month's BRYCS’ featured search on cultural competence.

Previous spotlights and featured searches, including last month's featured search on parenting, can be found in the BRYCS site archive.