Is Your Agency Culturally Competent

This is the first blog in a 3-part series examining Cultural Competency. We’ll explore: What is Cultural Competency? Why is Cultural Competency important? What does Cultural Competency look like in schools and agencies serving multi-cultural communities?

First, a simple definition: The word culture implies shared patterns of behavior, traditions, customs, beliefs, and values. The word competence is used because it suggests the capacity to function effectively.

The truth is, while culture competency, along with cultural tolerance, cultural destruction, and the more recent cultural proficiency all sound somewhat academic, in practice, they are much simpler to understand.

• Cultural destruction: We have so little regard for your culture we will destroy it—you know, most of European history. Slave traders and owners. The entirety of U.S. policy toward Native Americans. The Nazis. Bad people.

• Cultural blindness—We think everyone is the same, so culture is irrelevant. Generally, well meaning in theory, but in practice it can take you down the road to a softer form of cultural destruction. It’s usually perpetuated by liberals of the “I’m colorblind, I don’t see difference” school of thought. Let’s be honest, if you say you can’t see race, or ethnicity or culture, your either, literally, blind, or you’re lying. Again, this often comes from a well meaning place by people who want to emphasize their own lack of prejudice. (this is a blog topic of its own).

• Cultural competence–A set of shared behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency or among professionals that enables the system, agency or professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. Or–When we design services we set up our agency in such a way that respects, understands and takes into account the culture of the people we serve.

At this point, someone, somewhere who is reading this is thinking, “we serve too many different cultures to understand and serve all of them.” No you don’t. There are very few agencies that serve more than two or three primary cultural groups. Even DMVs and local post offices serve their immediate communities. The DMV near me serves, whites, Latinos, Cambodians and a small Tongan community. Remember, many communities are served by culture specific agencies.

So, how do you become more culturally competent without learning everything about every culture on the planet?

• The easiest and most accessible way is to hire people who represent the cultures you serve. If that’s not possible?  Try harder.  If its still not possible…
• Subject Area Experts—Create SAEs who know and understand one of your client cultures. Let’s assume your agency serves 3-4 primary cultural groups. Assign one or two staff to become knowledgeable about one of the cultures. These staff should be knowledgable enough to answer colleagues’ questions and understand how your services can be constructed to serve these cultures.

As I said, it’s really not that difficult. It takes some time, some resources, and some caring.