Cultural Competence - Planning for Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Systems of Care
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.
Guiding Values and Principles
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 - Full Report
Visit the National Center for Cultural Competence for more information
http://gucchd.georgetown.edu/nccc/index.html