Cultural Competence Assessment Tool

Cultural Competence Assessment Tool

Multicultural psychotherapy counseling is an important factor in dealing with clients. It is mainly important if the client is having a bad relationship with the counselor, or facing either oppression or prejudice.Human services professionals should understand the various ways and strategies they should employ to help clients who have multicultural issues. In this paper we are going to examine the various cultural issues that affect clients and the ways that professionals help clients identify their cultures and overcome their thoughts(Ivey & Morgan, 2004).

Counselor helps clients in getting to understand themselves through and know how to express their cultural identity in many ways. The counselor meets the client in the first stage referred to as the exploring stage. In the stage, the counselor helps the client to relate their problems with the context. The process of attending is under this stage and includes the body language, eye contact and verbal tracking. The second process is the reflecting or the questioning process that is a component first stage; the exploring stage. This stage includes paraphrasing, open-ended questioning, and summarizing(Ivey & Morgan, 2004).

In the video we can see that the two counselors Dr. Brook Harris and Dr. Montana used this method as they tried to know how they are going to relate with them as they continue with the process. For example Dr. Brook Harris asks Puah the type of relationship she wants them to relate. Puah responds by saying that she needs an open relationship where he is honest with her. During this stage, it is important for the counselor to communicate empathy, acceptance, and positive regard(Ivey & Morgan, 2004).

Some of the multicultural issues that involve the client are the diversity of cultural groups among people. When people change location they move to new places where they find different people with different cultures. It can be hard for people to adapt to this new cultural context where they do know many people and don’t have new friends or close relatives. This becomes a multicultural issue since the client finds it hard to adapt to the new environment and hence depression.In the video we can see that Puah shows an example of this multicultural issue after relocating to this place. She fears that she is lonely in this place and she might disappoint her relatives who spend a large amount of money in educating her(Ivey & Morgan, 2004).

Counselors use strategies to help client with their multicultural issues. According to Brookes and Dr. Montana the strategies to be used are clarifying the impact of actions, reinforcement $ conditioning, identifying target actions, determining baselines, encouraging active choices, assessing stages of change, schedules of reinforcement, prescribing actions, constructing a hierarchy, exposing to images/experiences, fostering experience, encouraging commitments, providing training and rehearsal, and coaching and shaping(Ivey & Morgan, 2004).

To conclude, multicultural psycho-therapy can be seen as an important help in ensuring that the client receives help in the many ways especially if the problem is from a multicultural perspective. It also good for the psycho therapist to observe the strategies stated above to help them in their challenges.

1. Clarifying the impact of actions
2. This strategy involves clarifying the effect of actions o feelings, interpersonal relationships and thoughts. It is efficient when the client is not aware of the way their decisions or choices affects or are related to their symptoms or problems. It is important to highlight the effect of behavioral choices on feelings, thoughts and relationships. If this strategy is successful the result is greater awareness regarding behavior and understanding clearly ones place in the in the greater environment(RamiÌrez, 2007).
3. Illuminating reinforcement and conditioning
4. This strategy involves looking at how behavior is maintained and shaped by reinforcing and how it is useful when clients get to understand where their current dysfunctional behavior patterns came from. The professional implements this like Dr. Jill in the video by asking the client three to four question that aim in observing the patterns of conditioned and reinforced responses. If this strategy is successful, and the professional knows the external and reinforcement and conditioned response, the client is able to understand the problem more and the reason why change has been difficult in the past(RamiÌrez, 2007).
5. Identifying target actions
6. In this strategy, it is important for clients to try identifying the specific behavioral targets where the client should be changed. This is effective in the case where the client is not aware with the changes that should be made. Also, to help the client the strategy implementation involves asking the client three to four questions that aims at getting information from the client. If this strategy is successful, the professional is able to establish and know the targeted actions that should help in modification of the behaviors(RamiÌrez, 2007).
7. Determining baselines
8. This is a strategy that involves determining the duration and frequency of specific behavior with the purpose of establishing gauge and baseline progress. The strategy marker is to measure the frequency at which specific actions are important once the targets have been identified. After implementation of this strategy that involves asking the client some questions the desired achievement is to understand the scope of the problem(RamiÌrez, 2007).
9. Encouraging active choices
10. This strategy involves encouraging clients to make choices based on a realistic assessment of the likely results of their behavior. Incase clients are not taking action in the needed direction or are involved in actions that do not support their stipulated goals, then encouragement of active choices is important. After the implementation of this strategy, the desired achievement involves the need by the client to make good choices and inform subsequent choices(RamiÌrez, 2007).
11. Assessing stages of change
12. The sixth strategy involves assessing stages of change and prepares clients as the move toward action. If clients want to modify their behavior, it will be of help for a psycho-therapist to evaluate their stages of change. By employing this strategy the therapist can help the client go through each stage of the action at a time and help them adapt to the changes(RamiÌrez, 2007).
13. Establishing schedules of reinforcement
14. When clients require incentives and encouragement to work toward change may be of help to identify specific reinforces.The expected result of employing this strategy is change of behavior (RamiÌrez, 2007).
15. Prescribing actions
16. This is a strategy employed by therapists to assign the action that should be done by clients to help them change their behaviors. It is useful mainly when the results of this is to activate change when client is tuck from an ineffective pattern and is not sure what type of change to make. If this strategy is effective, the clients will be able to evaluate the actions and know which ones are to be repeated and the new behaviors that should be adopted(RamiÌrez, 2007).
17. Constructing a hierarchy
18. It involves the creation of a hierarchy of situations or behaviors that are observed at different levels of distress to identify an intervention strategy. In this case, if the distress has been reported in related but related situation it is important to identify the specific stimuli that are related with the unwanted responses. The achievement that is seen with this strategy is that it helps in understanding the different stimuli that affects the client(RamiÌrez, 2007).
19. Exposing clients to images or experiences
20. This involves exposing the client to real–life experiences or distressing images to desensitize or extinguish problematic responses. If the client has unwanted response that has to be related to a particular stimulus it may be important to use exposure to extinguish the response. The end result of this strategy is that the client can avoid situation like that and relate the real-life situation with his or her situation and hence overcome it(RamiÌrez, 2007).

References

Ivey, A. E., Ivey, M. B., & Morgan, L. (2004). Counseling and psychotherapy: a multicultural perspective (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Ramírez, M., &Ramírez, M. (2007). Multicultural psychotherapy: an approach to individual and cultural differences (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Team Cultural Competence Assessment

BSHS/465

Alexis Bowman, Kimberly Helke, Angel Salinas

8/15/16

In the Human Services field, being culturally aware is very important when working with the clients. There will be cases where the client has strong beliefs so becoming aware of your own culture and theirs will help with the delivery of services. Please complete this 30 question survey to get a better understanding of how you handle different cultures as well as your own. This tool will help to improve in any areas that may not be as strong.

19) alcohol/substance abuse/treatment? 1 2 3 4

1. Are you aware of the many different cultures that are in the community you will be working in?
2. Yes/no
3. Please list all the cultures/races that you are aware of in the community
4. Are you aware of the possibility of different languages that are spoken within the community and the cultures/races
5. Yes/no
6. Please list the languages that you are aware of
7. Are you aware of the services that are available to the different cultures
8. Yes/no
9. Please list the services that you are aware of and the cultures that these services are made available for
10. Are you aware of the problems that the community faces
    1. Homeless yes/no
    2. Drugs/substance abuseyes/no
    3. Low incomeyes/no
    4. Otheryes/no
11. How culturally aware do you feel that you are
12. Somewhatmedium awareaware
13. Do you feel that you are sensitive to the needs of cultural needs of the clients
14. Yes/noSomewhat
15. Are you willing to provide services to LGBTQ community
16. Yes/no
    • Are you aware of the fact that family members may have different roles in different cultures
    • Yes/noSomewhat
    • Are you willing to accept the client’s decisions to what they feel is the right course of action with the services that are provided that agrees with their culture
    • Yes/nosomewhat
    • Do you treat all your clients equally and not going to discriminate against due to their beliefs customs, values or morale’s based on their culture
    • Yes/no
    • Do you understand that the use of a foreign accent is not a sign that the client has limited intellectual capacity or other learning disability
    • Yes/noSomewhat
    • Are you willing to take into effect that communication skills are different between different cultures are you willing to accept that you may have to adjust your communication skills to fit the needs of the client
    • Yes/NoSomewhat
    • Do you work collaboratively with programs that agency provides?
    • NOT AT ALL BARELY FAIRLY WELL VERY WELL
    • 16) Employment training of different cultures? 1 2 3 4
    • 17) Educational opportunity?1 2 3 4
    • 18) Housing for different cultures? 1 2 3 4