December 1997
The Director - Features
Developing Multicultural Competency
Understanding your own practices is the key to understanding others.
Developing cultural competency is a skill that can be learned by practicing to listen and understand those whose attitudes and beliefs may be different than your own.
Developing Multicultural Competency, written by Lynne Ann DeSpelder and Ronald K. Barrett, focuses on how to develop your cultural competency and take the first steps to accommodating families with different cultural beliefs and practices.
The article explains how to listen for and mirror language patterns and gather information about distinctive rituals, practices and beliefs. Demonstrating the Barrett Inferential model, the article also explains how death customs can differ even within groups of people, such as African-Americans, and how culture, social class and spirituality play a role in funeral service practices.
DeSpelder is an instructor on death and dying at Cabrillo College, CA. Barrett is a professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA, and a national consultant specializing in culturally sensitive treatment interventions.
