Yvonne Asamoah - Innovations in Delivering Culturally Sensitive Social Work Services

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Innovations
in Delivering
Culturally Sensitive
Social Work Services:
Challenges for Practice
and Education

Innovations
in Delivering
Culturally Sensitive
Social Work Services:
Challenges for Practice
and Education

Yvonne Asamoah
Editor

Innovations in Delivering Culturally Sensitive Social Work Services: Challenges for Practice and Education has also been published as Journal of Multicultural Social Work Volume 4, Number 4 1996.

1996 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The development, preparation, and publication of this work has been undertaken with great care. However, the publisher, employees, editors, and agents of The Haworth Press and all imprints of The Haworth Press, Inc., including The Haworth Medical Press and Pharmaceutical Products Press, are not responsible for any errors contained herein or for consequences that may ensue from use of materials or information contained in this work. Opinions expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily those of The Haworth Press, Inc.

First published by:
The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580 USA

This edition by Routledge:

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square, Milton Park Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 711 Third Avenue New York, NY 10017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Innovations in delivering culturally sensitive social work services: challenges for practice and education / Yvonne Asamoah, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56024-812-2 (alk. paper)
1. Social work with minorities-United States. 2. Multiculturalism-United States. I. Asamoah, Yvonne Wood, 1940-.

HV3176.156 1997	362.84'00973--dc21
96-51968	CIP

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Yvonne W. Asamoah, PhD, is Professor of Social Work at Hunter College in New York City. Previously a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Ghana for 14 years, she has also taught at Smith College and the University of Connecticut. Dr. Asamoah has written numerous articles and frequently participates in conferences, workshops, and panel discussions in the United States and abroad. Her recent work has addressed the need for providing services to the homeless, minority management training, multicultural issues in the workplace, and social work education in Africa. A member of several professional organizations, including the National Association of Social Workers and the Society for International Development, Dr. Asamoah's expertise and leadership skills are frequently sought. In 1995, she was selected by the United Nations Centre for Regional Development to serve as an international trainer for a training course held in Sri Lanka.

Innovations
in Delivering
Culturally Sensitive
Social Work Services:
Challenges for Practice
and Education

CONTENTS

Lawrence E. Gary

Yvonne Asamoah

Paule McNicoll
Carole Pigler Christensen

Joyce O. Beckett
De lores Dungee-Anderson

Gisle Legault

Christine Bitonti
Eric Albers
Thom Reilly

Edgar Colon

Lynne M. Healy

Wynetta Devore

Foreword

In recent years, the concept of cultural diversity/cultural competence has begun to emerge in the social science and human service literature. There has been an increasing emphasis on culture as a determinant of human behavior that has important implications for social work practice. This is largely due to the drastically changing demographics in American society which have brought record numbers of women and ethnically diverse persons into contact with the social service system.

The focus of the content on diversity has largely been on explaining cultural values and customs of various groups and, to some extent, examining the impact of mainstream institutions and policies on these groups. In its attempts to delineate the differences between ethnic groups, this approach to cultural diversity in the human services tends to deemphasize the diversity within ethnic groups and has the effect of promoting stereotypes. While this perspective may be useful for explaining some of the behavior of various ethnic groups within mainstream society, it has offered relatively little in the way of developing effective models of intervention that utilize the strengths of ethnically diverse populations to adequately address their needs.

At the crux of this issue of developing culturally competent practice models is the need for a paradigm shift. Most of the current theories of social work practice are drawn from behavioral science theories that are rooted in a Eurocentric paradigm that focuses on the individual, even when the group is the unit of analysis. However, the cultures of many of the non-European ethnic groups that are heavily represented in the United States (e.g., Asians, African-Americans, Hispanics, etc.) focus on the group as the basic unit; the individual is secondary. Thus the individual-centered paradigm that predominates social science theories is often not appropriate for predicting and modifying the behavior of non-European persons.

Two frameworks that utilize a cultural perspective are the feminist and the Afrocentric frameworks. These perspectives have enriched social work theory and practice. However, much more research utilizing these frameworks is needed to fully develop cultural theories. In addition, there is a need for the increased use of qualitative research to begin to build theory in this area. The articles in this special volume represent a beginning step in this process.

Lawrence E. Gary, PhD
Professor, School of Social Work
Howard University
Washington, DC 20059

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: Foreword. Gary, Lawrence E. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Multicultural Social Work (The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 4, No. 4, 1996, pp. xiii-xiv; and: Innovations in Delivering Culturally Sensitive Social Work Services: Challenges for Practice end Education (ed: Yvonne Asamoah) The Haworth Press, Inc., 1996, pp. xi-xii. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [ I -800-342-9678,9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST) E-mail: getinfo@haworth.com].

1996 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction:
Culturally Sensitive Service Delivery:
Imperatives for the Future

The concept of cultural sensitivity is no longer a strange or foreign one to social work practitioners, educators and policy makers. The question is no longer one of whether to provide culturally competent services to clients, but rather how can we do it best.

Much of the early work in this area came from the fields of anthropology, social and cross-cultural psychology, linguistics, and communications. Researchers in these fields blazed the trail by demonstrating the significance of culture as a variable in behavioral processes and interpersonal encounters, a significance that was either largely ignored or underestimated in many of the helping professions. Their work challenged our tendencies towards ethnocentrism in theory development and in practice (see, e.g., Brislin, 1981; Trian-dis, 1964, 1972), and urged us to develop more culturally relevant approaches to both research and counseling. Two approachesthe studying of specific cultures (emic) and the identification of transcultural principles relevant to helping situations across cultures (etic) were seen as essential to developing increased multicultural understanding and counseling strategies (see, e.g., Fukuyama, 1990).

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