Cultural Competence

Culturally Competent Family-Centered Practice (Organizational Development Model of Practice)
This training was developed to assist family practitioners and organizations in increasing their level of cultural competence. The training focuses on how culture affects worldview, communication, assessment, goal setting, and intervention. Some of the areas addressed include: personal awareness, language, knowledge of community, agency policy, identity development, the use of ethnographic tools, environmental factors, and the organizational development of a comprehensive family-centered cultural competence plan.

Culturally Competent Interviewing Skills
This training focuses on culturally competent interviewing skills, including awareness of cultural taboos, nonverbal language, and the use of translators and interpreters. This skill-based workshop is highly interactive, with considerable time spent in practicing tools on participants' case examples.

Healing and Revival of the Family Spirit
The greatest strength a family has is its spirit. Family rituals have enabled the family to survive for centuries. This workshop focuses on using family rituals to rekindle family spirit. The use of family rituals in case management, family development, and family therapy are explored.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Issues in Family Diversity and Resilience
This training explores the various ways sexual identity diversity impacts family life in contemporary U.S. Issues of same-sex headed households, lesbian/gay adoption and foster care issues, and developing support systems for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered/questioning youth. Participants will be encouraged to engage in a concrete exploration of the barriers to developing culturally competent services for the lgbt community, including a forthright discussion of the need to honor religious diversity and the role of gender conscription that harms us all.

Divorcing the "Dis" and Empowering the "abled"
This training provides hands on learning, active participation and appeal to the full spectrum of adult learners. The purpose is to influence a paradigm shift in how the disability community is viewed, both by its members and those who are temporarily unlabeled. The workshop explores the language of disabilities and the encompassing nature of labeling, to understand the inherent oppression of the present disability movement and to provide skills and language to empower differently-abled people.

Family-Centered Assessment with Immigrant and Refugee Families
This training focuses on major areas that must be considered in the assessment of immigrant and refugee families. Some of the issues explored include: reasons for immigration, immigration status, language issues, cultural taboos, literacy level, educational attainment, and trauma. Participants develop skills to identify strengths, and learn to use basic systematic tools to analyze family and community dynamics in order to understand the current family situation and the family's possibilities for the future.

Family-Centered Practice with Immigrant and Refugee Youth and their Families
This workshop uses hands-on exercises in combination with touching personal experiences and current research in order to introduce professionals to issues affecting family-centered practice with immigrant and refugee children and their families. The presenter provides practical suggestions and material for working with this population from a strength-based family development perspective.

Family-Centered Practice with Bicultural, Biracial, and Bilingual Children
This workshop uses hands-on exercises in combination with current research to introduce professionals to some of the issues affecting family-centered practice with biracial, bilingual, and bicultural children. The practical suggestions and material for working with this population are presented from a family development perspective.

Family-Centered Practice in Rural Communities
This training addresses cultural and structural barriers that affect family-centered practice in rural communities. A development cultural competence model is demonstrated to encourage agencies and organizations to use inherent cultural strengths in rural communities to better serve the families.

Family-Centered Practice with African-American Families
This advanced training module is designed for organizations that are interested in specific ethnographic skills and tools to work with African-American families.

Reaching African American Youth
The training will explore strategies to establish effective partnerships between service providers and African American youth. The session will include informative and challenging dialogue and discussion of various cultural competency and ethnographic techniques (including the use of rap music) that support collaboration and partnership between youth, schools, community organizations, and law enforcement.

Family-Centered Practice with Hispanic/Latino/a Families
This advanced training module is designed for organizations that are interested in specific ethnographic skills and tools to work with Latino/a families.

Family-Centered Practice with Native American Families
This advanced training module is designed for organizations that are interested in specific ethnographic skills and tools to work with Native American families.

Working with Disenfranchised Families
This workshop brings together state-of-the-art case management strategies and current knowledge to help workers effectively resolve increasingly common and complex child welfare/family support issues. The presentation focuses on assessment, in order to provide a conceptual framework for working with disenfranchised families. Strategies/approaches are both discussed and practiced.

Privilege, Power and its Effects on Young Women’s Development
Making the commitment to provide leadership in developing lasting commitment to girls of all racial/ethnic backgrounds, requires us to understand how issues of culture and identity affect the lives of our girls/young women, as well as, ourselves. This presentation will explore the development of culturally competent programs, including an exploration of the obstacles, such as white privilege, which affect the vision and realities of the girls we want to serve, as well as, the service providers poised to help.

Bringing People to the Table to Assist Minority Youth
Focus of this session will be the coalition building skills needed when governmental departments, community organizations and other stakeholders join forces to deal with difficult community issues like disproportionate minority confinement. A special emphasis will be given to community involvement, goal setting, resource development, leadership development, and public awareness campaigns.