In This Issue - THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER Online

Guidelines to KNOW Foreign-Born Clients
Know the country of origin basics.
• What factors contribute to national pride?
• What is unique to this country?
Notice social norms.
• Learn the customary greetings from country of origin.
• Know if there is a nationalized religion, familiarize yourself with it, and know how it
influences societal norms.
• Understand primary societal norms from country of origin.
Observe family values common to country of origin.
Watch for immigration/acculturation issues.
• Use the ICAL-5 checklist.
• Use the culturagram for evaluating and assessing needs.
• See the client as an individual who may or may not value every cultural norm.
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Be aware of personal biases.
mind, consider this: You recognize the
need to help a client learn to verbalize
wants and needs in an intimate relationship.
After some resistance, your client
shrugs his or her shoulders and says,
“Mai-pen-rai,” pronounced “my-ben-lie,”
meaning, “It doesn’t matter.” “Mai-penrai”
is a well-known saying and attitude
in Thailand (V. Rall, personal communication,
September 7, 2009). Imagine, too,
a client seems to accept abusive language
from his or her teen and resists attempts
on your part to teach appropriate relationship
boundaries and consequences.
You learn through further discussion that
your client was once very disrespectful to
a parent and accepts the current situation
as manifest karma. Both scenarios
of accepting undesirable circumstances
through mai pen rai or karma can be
barriers to empowering a client. Building
on strengths of the independent Thai
culture, a social worker could focus on
individualistic strengths—also a Thai attitude—to
overcome limiting beliefs.
Thai culture upholds a societal
hierarchy as follows: king, monks, royal
family, military/government, teachers,
elderly, and wealthy (V. Rall, personal
communication, September 7, 2009).
This societal hierarchy or vertical society
is a Buddhist inspired attitude, and is
therefore deemed meaningful (Limanonda
& Bahassorn, 1995). Understanding
Thai societal hierarchy helped me better
appreciate why my Thai friend refers to
her American husband, who once taught
English in Thailand, as “Teacher James”
(T. Fritzinger, personal communication,
October 8, 2009). It is typical for
Thai immigrants to carry the vertical or
classist societal attitudes and values here
1 The New Social Worker Fall 010
from their homeland (V. Rall, personal
communication, September 7, 2009).
Positioning yourself in the teacher or
educator role will establish credibility
with your Thai client.
Observe Family Values
A significant portion of generalist
social work practice is in understanding
and working with families (Kirst-Ashman
& Hull, 2009). KNOWing some common
Thai family values will be helpful
in identifying family strengths and needs.
Suppose you are interviewing a Thai
client and learn that Dad, Mom, and two
grade school-age daughters all sleep in
the same bed. What goes through your
mind? In this scenario, it is appropriate
for a social worker to determine whether
there is any sexual abuse, but to assume
so because of family sleeping arrangements
is a mistake. It is a cultural norm
for Thai families to share one bedroom,
if not the same bed. Research among
Thai families shows bed sharing is across
the board in Thai culture from the highly
educated to the peasant (Anuntaseree,
et al., 2008). This is part of the strong
family bonding common to Thai families
and can be seen as a strength if properly
understood.
Living arrangements among Thai
families are ever-changing. It is highly
common for elderly parents as well as
a newly married couple to live with the
nuclear family (Limanonda, 1995). Our
U.S. individualistic society often finds
multi-generational or co-residential living
odd. It is important for social workers to
be aware of and challenge their biases
when working with foreign-born clients
(Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2009). Multi-generation
residential living can be a family
strength to build upon.
Imagine you are working with a
couple, and they are struggling financially.
The American born husband is upset
with his Thai-born wife for sending money
to her parents in Thailand. Who are
you sympathetic toward? Deeply seeded
in Thai culture, inspired by Buddhism,
is caring for parents (Limanonda, 1995).
One Thai friend wires money monthly to
parents, and another provides vitamins
and nutritional supplements to her elderly
family members on her annual visit
to Thailand (V. Rall, personal communication,
September 7, 2009). For a Thai
person to forgo supporting elderly family
would be seen as forsaking a sacred duty.
Watch for Immigration /
Acculturation Issues
The final step in KNOWing your
foreign-born client is to understand the
client’s current level of acculturation,
because it helps significantly in evaluating
needs and perceptions (Kirst-Ashman
& Hull, 2009). Five questions assist better
understanding of Immigration Circumstances
and Acculturation Level. I call
them the ICAL-5 checklist. The questions
are:
• How long have they been in this
country?
• What were the circumstances in
coming here?
• Do they have a support system here?
• To what degree do they feel accepted
here?
• What is important to this family or
individual? (Kirst-Ashman & Hull,
2009).
Just as a social worker would use
an ecomap or genogram as a tool for
assessment and understanding, the social
worker could incorporate into that ecomap
the answers to the above questions.
The “culturagram,” a term coined by
Congress and Kung (2005), incorporates
the above questions, as well as the following:
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Legal status
Language spoken at home and in
the community
Health beliefs
Crisis events
Holidays and special events
Contact with religious and cultural
institutions