Programme full

Competence, Cultural Competence and Ethnicity in Scottish Health and Social Care
Russell, L.
(Glasgow Caledonian University)
Thursday 16 April 2015 13:30 - 15:00
PAPER SESSION 5
This paper seeks to explore how discourses of safety, competence and in particular 'cultural competence' might be
associated with ethnic boundary making in a Scottish health and social care context. Ensuring safety and avoiding
medical accidents and mistakes is an increasing preoccupation within health and social care, associated with efforts to
enhance interprofessionality in the context of pressure to cut costs. Greater attention to staff mistakes and poor
teamwork accompanies a well-established focus on codifying competencies for the purposes of training and an
evidence-based approach to improvement. In a racialised health and social care workforce, with BME staff overrepresented
in particular occupational groupings, it seems plausible that BME staff may be disproportionately amongst
those subject to this growing 'safety surveillance'. Yet the idea of competence as social capital that can be defined,
measured and delivered is also manifest in diversity management approaches to racial equality which attempt to instil
'cultural competence' as a means of ensuring equal treatment and challenging institutional racism. Like 'merit',
competence is not a universal but racially inscripted. 'Cultural competence' seems to be promoting a different kind of
playing field but has been criticised for being essentialising. This paper seeks to identify how the concept of 'cultural
competence' has been discussed and operationalised in Scottish health and social care and attempts to relate
competence discourses to whiteness and the culturalisation of politics.
Older African Caribbean Seniors’ Views and Understandings of Cultural Sensitivity and Cultural Competence
in Health Care Practice
Watson, N.
(Open University)
It is now acknowledged that large numbers of senior older people from the Black African Caribbean Community are
approaching retirement, following years of service to the NHS and other British Public sector Services. They are now
becoming increasingly dependent on access to the NHS for health care in their later years. There is evidence in the
literature that the needs of people from BME communities are not being appropriately met by health service
providers. However, there are gaps in the research evidence base from Black African Caribbean perspectives, and
their voices have not always been clearly heard in relation to their own culture specific needs and understanding of
culturally sensitive and competent care.
This paper will review understandings and relevance of cultural competence and sensitivity of health care practice for
Black African Caribbean seniors through a systematic literature review. It aims to identify the present state knowledge
in order to locate their own voices in the research base. There are implications for nursing and health care practice in
a diverse UK setting, where policy emphasises the need for health services to be responsive to the needs of service
users. The emphasis is considered within the context of the post Windrush contribution of Black African Caribbean
people, specifically women, to the NHS in particular. Their dependence on the NHS as senior retired citizens, for
health care highlights issues relating to whether their culture specific care needs are understood, and the extent to
which these are being met from their own perspectives.
Rights, Violence and Crime
W119, HAMISH WOOD BUILDING
Saving the Gezi Park: 2014 June Resistance in Turkey
Korkmaz, E.E.
(Istanbul Kemerburgaz University)
The Gezi Park Resistance was an unexpected explosion of the already accumulated reaction and anger of millions of
Turkish citizens that opened a new chapter in Turkish political history by actualizing the most massive, determinant
and militant mobilization against the oppressive measures of the government.
The aim of AKP Government, which is becoming increasingly authoritarian, to change the basics of the system and
the weakness of the formal opposition create suitable conditions for the uprising. This was a resistance against the
Power, but not aiming to overthrow it. The Gezi Park Resistance still affects the social and political situation in Turkey
yet and should be analysed well by social scientists aiming to read the future of the Turkish politics.
In this presentation, I will discuss the main reasons of the Resistance that mobilized millions of people for almost all
June that has become the biggest challenge to the Islamist government.
185 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University