Essay Sample on Cultural Competence in Counseling: Essential for Successful Outcomes

Introduction

As modern society continues to become more culturally diverse, the need for cultural competence can no longer be denied in organizations and in professions that require daily interactions with people from varying cultural and social backgrounds. The profession of a counselor is one of such and requires multicultural competence to ensure successful results from all their clients, despite their cultural relations. This is also important in eliminating the notion that clients have no hope of reaching out and be heard unless they share a common culture with the counselor. This paper defines a "Culturally Competent" counselor and discusses the traits, skills, and experiences that are necessary to attain cultural competence by a counselor. It also discusses the description and definition of Cultural Competence by the ACA code of ethics and how one would determine how culturally competent they are as counselors.

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A Culturally Competent Counsellor

Cultural competence in counseling is the ability of a counselor to produce positive results in encounters with patients or clients of different cultural backgrounds (Pedersen et al, 2015). this includes their ethnicity, gender, income, disability, religion, expression and varying social factors. The building of trust with the client is a major first step in the process of counseling. However, building trust between persons of different cultural backgrounds presents obstacles and hindrances that may impact negatively on the counseling process, making and drag its progress. Different cultures may exhibit a difference in attitude towards major challenges that may appear in their lives (Dovidio & van Zomeren, 2017). With this, solutions that work for common problems may fail to work in others. Counselors should thus strive to train and be prepared so that they can deliver the best possible result in spite of cultural or social boundaries between them and their clients.

There are traits, skills, and experiences that I believe to possess and will help me in attaining cultural competency. For instance, one needs to have the ability to assess and judge situations from their own and from their client's perspective who might be from a different cultural background. Adequate knowledge and experience of theories, strategies, and skills in conventional scholar counseling is also an important value for multicultural competency. One should also have the ability to distinguish between and interpret both indirect and direct styles of communication, be concerned about the difference in linguistics and cultures amongst individuals, and their welfare. One should also be sensitive to the myths and stereotypic beliefs of people in varying cultural backgrounds. Having acquaintances from varying cultural backgrounds also helps one experience first-hand the different traits that each may show or share.

How Does the ACA Code of Ethics Describe and Define Cultural Competence?

The American counseling association (ACA) is a scientific, professional, and educational organization whose members work in various settings and mainly serve multiple capacities. The counseling profession empowers diverse groups, individuals, and families to properly accomplish their education, wellness, and mental health. ACA defines cultural competence as the ability to identify different minority and hence help deal with cultural issues that are inherently unique (Gelso et al., 2014). This implies that for a counselor to be culturally competence they must have the ability to identify challenges of cultural diversity in the United States and posse's cultural knowledge and awareness that are specific to the uniqueness of every group hence, provide a certain level of treatment that meets the American ethical standards.

What Does Cultural Competence Look Like?

Councilors who are culturally competent highly respect multiple cultural ways of seeing, living and knowing, also celebrate the benefits of an aspect of diversity and hence have the ability to honor and understand differences. Cultural competence in terms of practice looks like a never-ending journey that mainly involves a critical reflection of understanding and learning how different people perceive the world and the participation of different systems for the purpose of sharing knowledge. Looking at cultural competence it's clear that it's not static and the level of people cultural competence vary depending on the different response to new situations, relationships, and experience.

Cultural competence is based on their main elements which include skills, attitude, and knowledge. These elements are vital at three major levels. These levels include; individual level, service level and also at the broader system level. However, there is no particular checklist to tick and identify a culturally competent counselor. However, one can start off from building a picture of the attitude, knowledge, and skill required (Ratts et al., 2016). For example, a counselor who understands and respects diversity are basically culturally competent. They mainly have a proper understanding of and hence honor the cultures, history, traditions, language. They value individual abilities and capacities. They recognize the aspect of diversity and how it enriches society and eventually develop a valid evidence-based practice about different ways of knowing. They also demonstrate a commitment to developing or improving their own competence using family and the surrounding communities.

How Do You Know If You Are Culturally Competent?

As we have defined culturally competent as the ability for one to shift their cultural perspective and hence adapt one's behavior to differences and similarities in culture. However, the most fundament question as a counselor is known if you are culturally competent. First, it's important to understand that cultural competence is all about our actions and will to build an understanding among people, to be able to respect different cultural perspectives, working towards acquiring equal opportunities and strengthening our cultural security (Ratts et al., 2016). For a counselor to know they are culturally competing they must have the ability to build better relationships because it is key to cultural competence and it is mainly based on the basic foundations of having an understanding of each and every individual attitude and expectations and eventually having the ability to strengthen knowledge.

Consequently, understanding and respecting people's diversity and hence embracing different ranges of cultures as a form of the social fabric in our society is another way counselors can know they are culturally competent. Having the ability to properly communicate effectively with people across all cultures and being aware of different people world view can be understood as knowing that you are culturally competent. Having a positive attitude towards other people's culture and gaining knowledge, understanding of various cultural practices and developing good communication and interaction skills across cultures is another way of knowing that you are culturally competent. Finally, another way to know that you are culturally competent is having the ability to challenge and identify individual cultural assumptions, beliefs and values and finally making a commitment to converse at different cultural interface.

Conclusion

A counselor with more often than not have to encounter individuals from different backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences from one's. Showing the same understanding, legitimacy compassion towards each individual, demands the counselor be culturally competent. To become a multiculturally competent counselor is a demanding task and one has to put in a lot of effort, commitment and time to achieve it. Nevertheless, it proves to be worthwhile as being able to interact and serve individuals from different cultures will have the desired positive outcome.

References

Dovidio, J. F., & van Zomeren, M. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford Handbook of the Human Essence. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-the-human-essence-9780190247577

Gelso, C. J., Nutt Williams, E., & Fretz, B. R. (2014). Counseling psychology. American Psychological Association. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-43178-000

Pedersen, P. B., Lonner, W. J., Draguns, J. G., Trimble, J. E., & Sharron-del Rio, M. R. (Eds.). (2015). Counseling across cultures. Sage Publications.https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/counseling-across-cultures/book237538

Ratts, M. J., Singh, A. A., NassarMcMillan, S., Butler, S. K., & McCullough, J. R. (2016). Multicultural and social justice counseling competencies: Guidelines for the counseling profession. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 44(1), 28-48. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmcd.12035