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Cultural Competence and Clinical Supervision
Cultural Competence and
Clinical Supervision
The diverse, multicultural makeup of our society means we must carefully consider
issues of race, culture and other dimensions of diversity. Developing cultural competence
is now “a recognized requirement for achieving professional standards in therapy
and supervision training” (Divac & Heaphy, 2005, p. 282). The need for cultural
competence in mental health practice has been described as a professional as well as
a moral and ethical imperative. As noted by Sue and colleagues:
White culture is such a dominant norm that it acts as an invisible veil
that prevents people from seeing counseling as a potentially biased
system.…What is needed is for counselors to become culturally aware,
to act on the basis of a critical analysis and understanding of their
own conditioning, the conditioning of their clients, and the sociopolitical
system of which they are both a part. Without such awareness,
the counselor who works with a culturally different [sic] client may
be engaging in cultural oppression using unethical and harmful
practices. (Sue et al., 1992, p.72-73)
CULTURAL COMPETENCE
The term cultural competence was first defined by mental health researchers over a
decade ago as “a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in
a system, agency, or amongst professionals and enables that system, agency or those
professionals to work effectively in cross cultural situations”(Cross et al., 1989 p. iv).
In this definition “culture” refers to integrated patterns of human behaviour that
include the language, thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs and values
of racial, ethnic, religious or social groups. Culture should not be conceptualized
narrowly in terms of only race, ethnicity, and country of origin; instead, culture must
be defined broadly as inclusive of various diversity dimensions including, but not
limited to, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.
“Competence” implies having the capacity to function effectively as an individual
and an organization within the context of the cultural beliefs, behaviours and needs
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