Culture Counts - PLANNING
Planning for Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Systems of Care
Guiding Values and Principles
As one thinks about a system of care responsive to the diversity of the people it serves, NAMI NH offers these values and principles to consider as you determine what you want from a service system.
Organizational
- Systems and organizations must sanction, and in some cases mandate the incorporation of cultural knowledge into policy making infrastructure and practice
- Cultural competence embraces the principles of equal access and non-discriminatory practices in service delivery.
Practice and Service Design
- Cultural competence is achieved by identifying and understanding the needs and help-seeking behaviors of individuals and families.
- Culturally competent organizations design and implement services that are tailored or matched to the unique needs of individuals, children, families, organizations and communities served.
- Practice is driven in service delivery systems by client preferred choices, not by culturally blind or culturally free interventions.
- Culturally competent organizations have a service delivery model that recognizes mental health as an integral and inseparable aspect of primary health care.
Community Engagement
- Cultural competence extends the concept of self-determination to the community.
- Cultural competence involves working in conjunction with natural, informal support and helping networks within culturally diverse communities (e.g. neighborhood, civic and advocacy associations; local/neighborhood merchants and alliance groups; ethnic, social, and religious organizations, and spiritual leaders and healers).
- Communities determine their own needs.
- Community members are full partners in decision making.
- Communities should economically benefit from collaboration.
- Community engagement should result in the reciprocal transfer of knowledge and skills among all collaborators and partners.
Family and Consumers
- Family is defined differently by different cultures.
- Family as defined by each culture is usually the primary system of support and preferred intervention.
- Family/consumers are the ultimate decision makers for services and supports for their children and/or themselves.
SOURCE: “Planning for Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Systems of Care . . . For Children & Youth with Social-Emotional and Behavioral Disorders and Their Families”, National Center for Cultural Competence, Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development, Washington DC, April 2004
Click here for the full report
http://gucchd.georgetown.edu/nccc/index.html
