Cultural Competence in Social Work Administrators

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Introduction

Cultural competence involves a set of principles and values illustrated by attitudes, behaviors, environment, and structures, which encourage people to work together. Cultural competence has emerged as an essential principle as it guarantees that workers from diverse backgrounds coexist and interact peacefully. It supports each worker to work efficiently and effectively with others from diverse religious, ethnic, economic, and social backgrounds (Falcon, 2018). Its principle can be applied effectively in the workplace by having meetings often in a bid to enhance diversity training and supporting workers to honor, value, revere, and uphold tolerance in both practice and theory. The white paper explains cultural competence for administrators who will act as advocates and policymakers.

Strategies Social Work Administrators

Self-awareness

Social work managers can advocate for, establish, and engage in professional training and education programs that enhance cultural competence within. Self-awareness is one of the basic approaches that a social work administrator may utilize to be culturally competent and a promoter of change. Social workers need to be aware of their prejudices. For instance, some social workers who work with child services despise parents who are drug addicts. Having worked with cases of addiction for over 20 years, several reasons lead to parents abusing drugs (Falcon, 2018). Mostly, parents desire to stop drinking alcohol or smoking, although they cannot stop it. Further, prejudices against drug addicts aggravate faulty stereotypes in society. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) code of ethics states that social employees must understand the culture of their clients and addiction could be part of an individual’s culture. Therefore, self-awareness is significant in enhancing accurate information concerning a given social problem (Ian, 2021). Social employees must assess their values and beliefs to do their work effectively and efficiently.

Creating a Culturally Receptive Organization

Another strategy may be operating towards generating a culturally receptive corporation. According to the Social Workers Association, within an agency, employees assist in formulating a culture. Pretty than a top-down approach, higher management believes its workers to assess and identify needs. Therefore, upper management should apply the style of democratic leadership (Jongen et al., 2017). Where this is employed, the agency is small but values employee assessment and suggestions to help enhance the clients’ quality care.

Empowerment Strategy

Through the power and developmental perspective among other empowerment in society to assist, they value and celebrate diverse cultures, considering the culture’s needs and strengths. Social change and empowering people bring new insight into cultural diversity (Jongen et al., 2017). People may start to consider the new cultures as an asset or a positive aspect of their life. For example, incorporating cultural competence into the current evidence-based care may positively influence the healthcare services delivery and assist enhance the quality of care given to patients (Srivastava, 2022). Effective communication allows social workers to gather correct medical information and issues affecting society.

Valuing Diversity

It implies respecting and accepting differences within and between cultures. People often assume that a shared culture is common between members of religious, linguistic, and racial groups, although this cannot be true. A group of people could share geographical and historical experiences, even though they can share only language, physical appearance, or spiritual beliefs (Knox & Haupt, 2020). However, cultural assumptions may guide them to make wrong conclusions. An individual who migrates to new regions and intermingles with other cultural beliefs establishes a kaleidoscope of subcultures within racial groups. Socioeconomic status, gender, and location may at times be more influential than racial aspects. For instance, a Vietnamese couple can move to the United States (US) and raise their children in a suburban area. This can contribute to children identifying much more with American pop culture than their parents’ Vietnamese culture (Marrone, 2018). Hence, understanding circumstances such as this may result in a better comprehension of the diversity complexity.

Adapting to Cultural Differences

Behaviors, values, policies, practices, attitudes, and structures are aspects that make it possible for cross-cultural communication to direct a culturally competent company or business. If one recognizes, values, and respects all cultures, and incorporates those values into the organizational system, culturally competent companies may fulfill the diverse groups’ needs (Marrone, 2018). This helps social workers to adapt to the changing cultural dynamics.

Dynamics of Cultural Differences

Being aware of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact can help in advocating for cultural competency. For example, two individuals can misjudge the actions of another based on their cultural expectations (Nash et al., 2019). Both may bring culturally prescribed patterns of etiquette, communication, and problem-solving. In addition, both can bring underlying feelings or stereotypes concerning working with somebody who is from another culture or diverse (Srivastava, 2022). Without a better understanding of their cultural diversity, misjudgments or misinterpretations can occur.

Challenges Social Work Administrators Experience in Developing Cultural Competency

Resistance to Change

Social work administrators might encounter resistance toward change. The culture of an agency may be susceptible to required change forming the opposition. Many individuals experience management changes within various companies. Some might be the best chance while others turn out to be the worst (Srivastava, 2022). When I was working at a facility for children and women’s residential addiction, the program director decided to change a policy for babies past six weeks old not to be included in groups having their mothers. The previous policy permitted babies until 6 months in a similar group to their mothers. Recently, a mother had a baby and did not trust vaccines. Her 8-week-old baby was required to be taken for babysitting. She decided to advocate for her baby as the baby was not a distraction because the mother would leave a group to feed the baby, this was approved then it was rejected the next day (Yoon et al., 2021). The new policy was perceived as not culturally fit based on the mother’s needs.

Use of Ethnocentric Lens

The utilization of an ethnocentric lens to create cultural competence is another challenge. Ethnocentrism is described as applying one’s beliefs while valuing the viewpoints of other groups. Every individual’s manner of performing and seeming natural to them may hinder cultural competence implementation. A simplified and extreme example of the way ethnocentrism may hinder operating together is the Second World War (Yoon et al., 2021). The Nazis trusted that Germans were the major superior race that applied propaganda to attempt to abolish the Jewish population. Allied forces did not trust this viewpoint and it led to war. In the agency, ethnocentrism might cause conflict (Srivastava, 2022). Differences between collectivism and individualism or conflicting perspectives on authority might yield intolerance.

The Unclear Linkage Between Cultural Prejudice and Its Effect on Daily Decision-Making

Even if the communities have increased cultural diversity awareness, generating consciousness of the cultural role in daily decision-making is challenging. Obstacles existed to support social work administrators and other managers and leaders to take the next approaches to comprehend cultural prejudice and its effect on community welfare decisions (Nash et al., 2019). Communities realized that awareness-building initiatives should offer a personal reflection on entrenched beliefs and initiate new ideas.

Recommendation Strategies to Address the Challenges

It is recommended that social work administrators should be provided with training to improve cultural awareness, skills, and knowledge of cultural differences. To resolve the issue of resistance to change, social work administrators must embrace team building and support sensitive training for their staff. In a move to increase cultural diversity awareness, several communities should go beyond merely offering information on changing demographics (Nash et al., 2019). Training programs on cultural awareness should include a series of social workers discussing cultural competence, exploring their cultures, and attaining awareness of the cultural differences represented in their society.

Recommended Strategies for Performance Difficulties and Ethical Issues

Furthermore, they should establish training programs aimed at assisting social workers in comprehending cultural prejudice and its effect on practice and decision-making. Integrate culture-specific values and attitudes into promotional and marketing tools. Social work administrators should widen their applicant search by posting job application ads on diverse job platforms. They can optimize their job postings by shunning gender-coded language and writing inclusive descriptions to support the organization in hiring a diverse labor force. Companies should guarantee culturally inclusive communication with staff to control a diverse workforce (Knox & Haupt, 2020). The safety rules, procedures, and other vital information must be designed accurately to overcome language and cultural barriers.

Further, employers need to offer workplace religious accommodation comprising dress code exceptions, schedule alterations, and excused absences from training programs that could be conflictive with the beliefs of the staff. Social work administrators need to ensure everyone feels as if they are valued in the team and make them more comfortable and open through team building. In addition, they should demonstrate to their staff that they respect and appreciate cultural diversity by being open to their values and traditions (Jongen et al., 2017). For instance, during a holiday season, ensure decorations are diverse to depict the various cultures or engage popular dishes from various nations at staff gatherings.

Policies Administrators Could Implement to Support Cultural Competency

Managing cultural differences requires companies to have practices and policies in place. This aims at ensuring that staff’s rights are safeguarded and the organization is compliant with set regulations and rules. Develop policies that highlight the expectations of the company concerning the conduct of employees. Social work administrators should articulate their commitment to assuring everybody is treated with respect and dignity always. They should have specific procedures to adhere to in case of a breach of any set policy. For example, a Zero-tolerance policy addresses specific behaviors and misconduct that cannot be tolerated (Srivastava, 2022). They comprise offensive jokes concerning religion, gender, or ethnicity. Sensitivity training may be initiated at the workplace because it is vital to ensure all workers comprehend how to co-exist with culturally diverse individuals.

Conclusion

Cultural competency for administrators who are acting as policymakers and advocates could employ the following strategies to succeed in their pursuit. These include empowerment, self-awareness, adapting to diversity, valuing diversity, and providing training programs for cultural competence awareness. Some of the challenges that social work administrators may experience are resistance toward change and the use of the ethnocentric lens. However, they can resolve the challenges by hiring a diverse workforce, training their staff on diversity, and embracing a zero-tolerance policy on cultural diversity misconduct or behaviors.

References

Falcon, G. (2018). Understanding cultural Diversity in education: Perceptions, opportunities and challenges (3rd ed.). Nova.

Ian, G. (2021). Integrative literature review on the importance of cultural competence in nursing (11th ed.). GRIN Verlag.

Jongen, C., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Clifford, A. (2017). Cultural competence in health: A review of the evidence (2nd ed.). Springer.

Knox, C., & Haupt, B. “. (2020). Cultural competency for emergency and crisis management: Concepts, theories and case studies (1st ed.). Routledge.

Marrone, S. R. (2018). Case study: Culturally competent healthcare organizations for Arab Muslims. Global Applications of Culturally Competent Health Care: Guidelines for Practice, (2), 221-227. Web.

Nash, D. B., Skoufalos, A., Fabius, R. J., & Oglesby, W. H. (2019). Population health: Creating a culture of wellness (3rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Srivastava, R. (2022). The health care professional’s guide to cultural competence – E-book (7th ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences.

Yoon, A. S., Moon, S. S., & Son, H. (2021). Understanding Korean Americans’ mental health: A guide to culturally competent practices, program developments, and policies (4th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.

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