Watch the following video of university students discussing what it means to become culturally competent. They provide specific strategies anyone can use to advance along the continuum.

To access a transcript for this video, please click Watch on YouTube. 

Based on the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) framework, three major steps are needed to grow in cultural competence:

1. learn about your own self-identity and culture,
2. learn about cultures that are different from your own, and
3. have experiences where you can navigate cultural differences and similarities.

A deeper cultural self-understanding helps you to make sense of and respond to differences in cultural perspectives based on your own culturally learned perspectives, while a deeper cultural other-understanding helps you make sense of and respond to differences in culture as they are presented by other cultural groups.

The following are tips for staff and foster parents on becoming culturally competent, outlined by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, Ontario (as cited in Lam & Cipparone, 2008). As you review them, think about ways you can implement these strategies into your placements and your own life.

Attributions

This chapter contains content from Creating Cultural Competence by Jacquelyn Wiersma-Mosley and Margaret Miller Butcher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License