Cultural competency is an expectation of all human service professionals. Define this concept and discuss its relevance to practice.
Chenoweth & McAuliffe share the broad definition that culture is comprised of the ‘knowledge, beliefs, customs and values in a given society’ (2015, Chapter 9) meaning that culture goes beyond simple connotations of race and ethnicity, to how we define our sexual orientation, our gender, our religious beliefs and even our disabilities. Cultural competency is widely regarded as an essential component within the human service provision and social work practice for this very reason, due to the wide variety of different cultures within our present day society, our acceptance and understanding of varying cultures …show more content…
In a multi-cultural nation like Australia it is inevitable that working within the human service provision you will encounter a wide variety of different cultural backgrounds on a daily basis, and as such, some techniques and frameworks may not be appropriate for every cultural group (Chenoweth and McAuliffe, 2015, p 272). With prominent societal issues including drug and alcohol abuse, soaring incarceration rates and unfortunately lower education standards, it is highly likely that during your practice in Australia, you will work within the context of an Indigenous Australian family or community (Ranzijn, McConnochie & Nolan 2009). Not only does this make cultural competency invaluable, but also due to the deep emotional scarring that the human service provision and policy makers inflicted upon the Indigenous people during the era of colonisation and assimilation, Indigenous people have seen the dangerous abuse of power that these professions can assert and as such can be wary of our welfare systems (Chenoweth and McAuliffe, …show more content…
Although the brutal colonisation of Australia may be an extreme example of power abuse and overt cultural incompetence, manipulation of power is still a very real consequence of cultural incompetence today. As previously mentioned, the way in which we interact with our clients and the frameworks we use to address their challenges are from a predominately white, western default standard, in doing so however, we are essentially making associations with the power that we possess in our work and our ‘whiteness’ (Sue, 2006). Although this may be indirect and perhaps unintentional, by referring back to these frameworks and approaches as a means by which to justify policy and change that affects the minority, we are, in a sense still issuing racism regardless of whether ethnicity or biological categorisations are directly referred to, a term that Pon (2009) coined as ‘new racism’. Our frameworks already essentially create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ power imbalance, creating boundaries for our practice and a basis for discrimination on the policy making level, the organisational level and even the personal level with our
Chenoweth & McAuliffe share the broad definition that culture is comprised of the ‘knowledge, beliefs, customs and values in a given society’ (2015, Chapter 9) meaning that culture goes beyond simple connotations of race and ethnicity, to how we define our sexual orientation, our gender, our religious beliefs and even our disabilities. Cultural competency is widely regarded as an essential component within the human service provision and social work practice for this very reason, due to the wide variety of different cultures within our present day society, our acceptance and understanding of varying cultures …show more content…
In a multi-cultural nation like Australia it is inevitable that working within the human service provision you will encounter a wide variety of different cultural backgrounds on a daily basis, and as such, some techniques and frameworks may not be appropriate for every cultural group (Chenoweth and McAuliffe, 2015, p 272). With prominent societal issues including drug and alcohol abuse, soaring incarceration rates and unfortunately lower education standards, it is highly likely that during your practice in Australia, you will work within the context of an Indigenous Australian family or community (Ranzijn, McConnochie & Nolan 2009). Not only does this make cultural competency invaluable, but also due to the deep emotional scarring that the human service provision and policy makers inflicted upon the Indigenous people during the era of colonisation and assimilation, Indigenous people have seen the dangerous abuse of power that these professions can assert and as such can be wary of our welfare systems (Chenoweth and McAuliffe, …show more content…
Although the brutal colonisation of Australia may be an extreme example of power abuse and overt cultural incompetence, manipulation of power is still a very real consequence of cultural incompetence today. As previously mentioned, the way in which we interact with our clients and the frameworks we use to address their challenges are from a predominately white, western default standard, in doing so however, we are essentially making associations with the power that we possess in our work and our ‘whiteness’ (Sue, 2006). Although this may be indirect and perhaps unintentional, by referring back to these frameworks and approaches as a means by which to justify policy and change that affects the minority, we are, in a sense still issuing racism regardless of whether ethnicity or biological categorisations are directly referred to, a term that Pon (2009) coined as ‘new racism’. Our frameworks already essentially create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ power imbalance, creating boundaries for our practice and a basis for discrimination on the policy making level, the organisational level and even the personal level with our