Expanding Practitioners’ Cultural Self-Awareness Julia Mirsky|Legit essays

I have uploaded the article that needs to be summarized. Needs to be 1-2 pages.

The summary must be written in your own words. Do not use quotes in your summary. A summary should contain only the author’s views, so try to be as objective as possible.

Include the following points for your summary:

● In the introduction: What is the author’s purpose, or goal, or thesis? Why is she writing this article? What does she want to say?

● What are the author’s methods or key points? How does the author go about making her points? What method is she using to conduct her study?

● What are the results, the findings?

● What are the conclusions? What does the author say about her findings? What are the implications of the results? What do the results mean for the field, for further research?

Tips:

● Do not use quotes in your summary.

● A summary should contain only the author’s views, be as objective as possible.

As you revise and edit your summary, compare it to the original and ask yourself:

○ Have I rephrased the author’s words without changing their meaning?

○ Have I restated the main idea and the supporting points accurately and in my own words?

Getting to Know the Piece of Fluff in Our Ears: Expanding Practitioners’ Cultural Self-Awareness Julia Mirsky

Israel being a multicultural society with a variety of ethnic groups, the delivery of

culturally competent services is a crucial issue in social work practice. This paper describes the outcomes of a training model for cultural competence applied with social work

graduate students in Israel. The model, based on work with immigrants’ narratives, increased the cultural self-awareness of the trainees. Presented are conceptual and

technical aspects of the training model as well as outcomes of an evaluation study. Fifty- one trainees submitted a short account of their personal experiences following the training. The reports indicated expansion in the trainees’ cultural self-awareness: awareness of their

own and their families’ immigration experiences as well as of other transitions in their lives. Training elements that made this outcome possible are discussed.

Keywords: Cultural Self-Awareness; Training; Migration

If the person you are talking to doesn’t

appear to be listening, be patient.

It may simply be that he has a small piece

of fluff in his ear. (A.A. Milne, 1926)

With the growth of multicultural settings and societies, practice with culturally diverse

clients has become an everyday reality in social work and other helping professions and

growing attention is being devoted to training culturally competent practitioners

(Allen-Meares, 2008; Engstrom and Okamura, 2008; Kwong, 2009). In Israel, the home

of highly diverse populations—Jews and Arabs, and immigrants from all over the

world who speak an array of different languages—culturally competent care provision

is especially important. In the last two decades, numerous practitioners and researchers

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

Correspondence to: Professor Julia Mirsky, Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, PO Box

653, Beer Sheva, 84105 Israel. Email: juliamirsky@gmail.com

Social Work Education, 2013 Vol. 32, No. 5, 626–638, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2012.701279

in Israel have addressed this issue (Bilu and Witztum, 1993; Ben-David, 1998; Jaffe,

1998; Arkin, 1999; Dwairy, 1999; Al-Krenawi and Graham, 2000; Roer-Strier, 2001; Lavee, 2003; Youngmann et al., 2008). However, only recently has the importance of

providing culturally sensitive care been acknowledged on the national scale with a call for action by the Israeli Ministry of Health (Ministry of Health, 2011).

Cultural competence is the ability of professionals to function successfully with people from different cultural backgrounds including race, ethnicity, culture, class,

gender, sexual orientation, religion, physical or mental ability, age and national origin (CSWE, 2008). Ingredients viewed as essential for cultural competence include having

an understanding, appreciation and respect for cultural differences and similarities within, among and between culturally diverse client groups (Hall, 2003). Culturally

competent care has been defined as a system that acknowledges the importance and

incorporation of culture, assessment of cross-cultural relations, vigilance toward the dynamics that result from cultural differences, expansion of cultural knowledge, and

adaptation of interventions to meet culturally unique needs (Whaley and Davis, 2007). Three components of cultural competence are consensual: cultural awareness, culture-

specific knowledge and culture-attuned skills (Lu et al., 2001; Sue, 2001; Lee and Greene, 1999). Cultural competence begins with an awareness of one’s own cultural

beliefs and practices, and the recognition that others believe in different truths/realities than one’s own (Kohli et al., 2010). This involves awareness of one’s own biases or

prejudices and is rooted in respect, validation and openness toward differences among people. Cultural knowledge is the knowledge of the client’s culture, worldview and

expectations. Cultural skills are the ability to intervene in a manner that is culturally sensitive and relevant (Sue, 2001).

The various cultural training programs focus on one or a number of the three components of cultural competence (Betancourt, 2003). The present paper addresses

the first of them—cultural awareness. Generally, in helping professions cultural awareness refers to practitioners’