The multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills survey is meant for assisting mental health professional learners to evaluate their multicultural counseling and therapy strengths and weaknesses. I will rate the responses from the students of the 60-item questions and then, in accordance with the answers, I would provide every student with a score for each of the three categories. Particularly, I scored the following in this survey:
Multicultural awareness 56 out of 80
Multicultural counseling knowledge 33 out of 61
Multicultural counseling skills 32 out of 60
Based on the scores, the multicultural counseling awareness was above average. Additionally, the knowledge of multicultural counseling was average while my multicultural counseling skills also rated average. However, the scoring criteria I used for the multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills survey (MAKSS) was not quite detailed. Those who took the survey entered their answers in the three subsections and they scored. Conversely, no explanations were offered to explain the validity of every answer and to distinguish which answers were incorrect or maybe, the individual needed some improvement. Therefore, I had to revisit the specified answers and their corresponding questions to assess them keenly to ensure that the final judgments complied with an educated guess explaining the specific items could work well to ensure multicultural competency.
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Code of ethics
Although I was unable to narrow down the particular multicultural competency areas that I needed improvement (with special exceptions to the overall subsections), the need for building multicultural competence was essential. As a future clinical mental health counselor, I will be expected to adhere to the professional Code of Ethics that conforms to my career field. Specifically, I will align with the requirements of the American Mental Health Counselors Association (2015), which elucidates the various ways that mental health counselors, who practice ethically, should establish their multicultural competence. For instance,
As a mental health counselor, I am responsible for attaining topnotch education to gain expertise on how to deal with my own biases when handling cases of people from different races, creeds, identities, and sexual orientations. Additionally, education provides solutions for handling those of diverse cultures, as well as those living with both physical and mental abilities. Therefore, I will have access to consultation, supervision, and counseling skills for avoiding possible biases that might curtail successful counseling processes. Furthermore, as a mental health counselor, I would consider the various multicultural factors like gender, race, religion, ethnicity, social class, orientation, age, and individual ability when conducting test interpretation. Also, I would consider these aspects when dealing with diagnosis and formulation of prognosis during treatments and when giving the best recommendations to the clients.
Based on the MAKSS, I have merely average skills and knowledge. This implies that I ensure that my cultural diversity education conforms to the Code of Ethics to increase my levels of competency. According to Suc & Suc (2016), multicultural counseling and therapy involve openness to diversity and require excellent levels of cultural humility. They note that openness must be central to effective multicultural counseling. Therefore, my goal here is to become an effective counselor; hence, I need to attain the best levels of openness to diversity to develop the required cultural humility in providing care.
Multicultural awareness
The major goal of multicultural awareness is to increase my personal, professional, and multicultural awareness. According to Atkins, S. L., Fitzpatrick, M. R., Poolokasingham, G., Lebeau, M., & Spanierman, L. B. (2017), most counselors who strive to develop multicultural awareness often leverage the lessons learnt from the culturally diverse clients, those from their work environments, knowledge gained from coursework, and during supervision and mentoring processes. Therefore, I will try to maximize my learning experiences gained from work, schools, or throughout my encounters with personal life. This implies that I will persevere regardless of the difficult emotions that I come across, as well as the conflicts of interest in the field of developmental counseling.
Measurable: I will ensure that the above goal is measurable by increasing my awareness. If I can be confident in my awareness, I would incorporate awareness into my professional and personal experiences to ensure that I increase my awareness in my professional career.
Achievable: I will wake up from my comfort zone during group sessions that involve encounters with clients, and question them deeper to gain further experience on culturally relevant questions to ensure that I gain deeper insights into their cultural background and the way their current life is directly influenced by their immediate environments.
Relevant: I will ensure that my actions align with the recommendations of the American Mental Health Counselors Association Code of Ethics (2015) to ensure the continual increase in multicultural awareness. By so doing, I am sure to become a competent and efficient counselor.
Time-bound: I will ensure that I attain this goal immediately I start interacting with people outside of my home. It is something that I can continuously work on.
Multicultural knowledge
The core goal is to diversify my personal and professional knowledge of multicultural counseling.
Specific: according to Fietzer, Mitchell & Ponterotto, a counselor trainee must have excellent multicultural competency. The required level of competency must be dictated by the counselor trainee’s multicultural personality. Multicultural personality entails the various traits, attitudes, and behaviors that expose people to culturally diverse environments. Therefore, I would create goals for diversifying my multicultural counseling knowledge, specifically by dedicating my time to comprehensively understand my own traits, attitudes, and behaviors. Also, it must be measurable based on a detailed weekly journal of the goal to ensure that it is achievable. To achieve the goal, I must manage time although it must ensure that I become and a professional mental health counselor in order to be relevant. I will start working on the goal as soon as this evening to catch up with time and ensure consistent learning of myself and my own culture.
Multicultural Counseling Skills
The major goal here is to increase multicultural skills in counseling to develop confidence that would guarantee both mindfulness and competencies. Notably, mindfulness in practice guarantees the development of multicultural counseling competencies.
References
American Counseling Association. (2014). ACA code of ethics. Retrieved from: https://www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/ethics/2014-code ofethics.pdf?sfvrsn=2d58522c_4
American Mental Health Counselors Association (AMHCA) Code of Ethics. (2015). Retrieved from http://connections.amhca.org/
Fietzer, A. W., Mitchell, E., & Ponterotto, J. G. (2018). Multicultural Personality and Multicultural Counseling Competency in Counselor Trainees. Counselor Education and Supervision, 57(2), 82-97. doi:10.1002/ceas.12095
Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (2016). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice (7th ed). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
