Cultural competence refers to the capacity to participate effectively and ethically in a professional and personal intercultural environment. It aims at ensuring that an individual is aware of their world views and cultural values and the impacts of making thoughtful, respective, and reasonable choices. Cultural competence, therefore, focuses on the ability of the actions and willingness of people to help build understanding with other individuals, strengthen cultures, and being respectful.
Cultural competency is essential to a social worker. This is because the social worker's perceptions of their cultural identity are different from the client's. The social worker requires several skills to achieve cultural competency. Self-awareness is an essential skill for a social worker. The social worker should know how their thoughts may have an impact on their ways of delivering services as well as client interactions. Values, sensitivity, ethics, self-reflection, and listening are skills that a social worker should possess (Baltus 2013). These help the social worker realize that their beliefs impact different backgrounds and cultures.
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Knowledge of various cultures forms the basis of cultural competency. Knowledge, therefore, is not strong enough to support the allegation. Cultural humility has been adopted to determine whether the social worker uses cultural knowledge to meet the clients’ needs (Hook et al., 2013). Cultural humility enhances self-awareness of the social worker's biasness and views and changes to a life-long process that needs them to learn from the client. Unlike in knowledge, cultural humility approaches the client humbly and the client is the teacher on their different cultures.
In my opinion, cultural competence refers to the skills and knowledge that help uphold human dignity to ensure effectiveness when dealing with multicultural clients. This is different from the definition by Kirst-Arshman & Hull (2012), which defines cultural competence as an understanding of the actions, expressions, values, and preferences of people. A social worker who is handling a pregnant teen should possess listening skills. The social worker should listen and understand every detail the teen explains, which makes the teen feel at peace. To sum up, a social worker must develop cultural competence. This helps the social worker get acquainted with the beliefs, values, attitudes, and needs of the clients for better delivery of services.
References
Baltus, M.G (2013). Cultural competence in school social work: A personal and professional learning curve
Hook, J. N., Davis, D.E., Owen, J., Worthington Jr, E. L., & Utsey, S.O. (2013). Cultural humility: Measuring openness to culturally diverse clients. Journal of counselling psychology, 60(3), 353.
Kirst-Ashman, K.K., & Hull, G.H.Jr. (2018). Understanding generalist practices (8 th ed). Boston, MA: Cengage learning
