PRACTICE

Cross-Cultural Awareness and Child Care Workers

 David Noyes

 There are two levels of awareness that child and youth care workers must strive to maintain and deepen: 
(a) Self-awareness as a unique individual with certain cultural values and beliefs that operate both conscious and unconscious levels and which might affect interpersonal and cross-cultural interactions, and 
(b) Self-concept in regard to professional identity and the feelings, values and beliefs that come into play with cross-professional interactions

 Sensitivity

I began my career in child care at a facility for New York City adolescents from a wide variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds. It became clear to me early on that cultural awareness and sensitivity were critical to effective youth care practice, and that the development of cultural sensitivity is an ongoing process, requiring continual self-examination and evaluation.

According to Nathanial Mayes, effectiveness in intercultural relationships involves five characteristics:

1. Critical insight into the characteristics and limitations of one's own cultural background;

2. Cognitive and attitudinal openness to evidence of cultural differences in others;

3. A sense of adventurousness in exploring with others what cultural differences mean;

4. Flexibility in adapting to and utilizing the learning styles of others;

5. Informed skepticism about diagnostic procedures applied to persons culturally different from mainstream whites.

It is imperative that child and youth care workers recognize the cultural filters they carry around and which might interfere with their ability to engage in objective and open communications with the clients they serve. Culturally sensitive workers are those who are not afraid to take the inner journey and examine their own feelings and belief systems, and take the responsibility for them.

The phrase, "Counsellor, know thyself," provides a good starting point for youth workers when trying to understand intercultural interactions. Know and be aware of your own cultural "stuff." Acknowledge it, check it out, and deal with it when you sense it creeping into the treatment process.

Self-concept

A related issue, with similar implications, involves professional self-concept. How do you see yourself! As a babysItter, or as a professional with unique expertise and insight! As a marginal employee peripheral to the treatment process, or as an essential part of the treatment team? A worker's mindset plays an important role in his/her ability to serve as an effective milieu change agent. My question here is, how have our relations with other mental health professions helped to sustain a negative self-concept among child care workers!

At present child and youth care is, in relation to other helping professions, in a minority position. The clinical value of a well-trained, experienced direct line worker is still fully appreciated by only a small number of progressive treatment agencies. And even here, salaries of child care workers generally remain significantly lower than those of their social work counterparts, let alone psychologists and psychiatrists. Over the years child and youth workers have become frustrated, and frequently resentful, about their minority status.

Such feelings may be grounded, but are nonetheless unproductive.

The key here is to get out of the "we" versus "they" game. What social workers do has value. What child care workers do has value. Mutual respect, as in the formula for cross-cultural interactions, is essential. Each profession has its own integrity and validity.

The "big three," social work, psychology and psychiatry, might take a lesson from cross-cultural relations and examine their roles in sustaining the status of child care work. Most likely they will not.

Our field will be recognized as a valid and distinct profession, as a "culture" with specific areas of expertise all its own, as more and more workers accept it themselves and demonstrate it in their daily practice efforts.

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Reprinted from Child Care Work in Focus. Copyright © Academy of Child and Youth Care Practice. Reproduced with permission.