Cultural Compentency

Cultural Compentency

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2005) states, “Cultural and linguistic competence is a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals that enables effective work in cross-cultural situations” (para. 1). Assessment tools offer human service professionals and agencies the ability to address cultural competency. The following will describe an assessment tool, offer results of Team B’s scores, and will provide recommendations for human service professionals and agencies to increase cultural competency.
Competency Assessment Tool Description
The cultural and linguistic competency self-assessment checklist is the tool Team B used for the cultural competency assessment. This assessment is used to enhance the consciousness and understanding of the employees of a human service agency about the significance of the cultural diversity and cultural competence. The assessment contains examples of how an agency and its’ employees should be directing their service toward the cultural bearings that involve their client’s nature. The assessment involves answering the questions with either A, things I do frequently; B, things I do occasionally; and C, things I do rarely or never (Goode, 2009).
Through answering of this assessment, an agency can see their weakness and strengths in cultural competency. The issues that the assessment covers are environment, materials, resources, communication styles, values and attitudes (Goode, 2009). The environment, materials and resources reflect the types of displays, such as pictures, artifacts and symbols pertaining to diverse cultures. Magazines should be in different languages, they should be from diverse cultural publications. The videos and literature that the agency exhibit to their client should reflect the culture and language of the population that is watching and reading the informative videos literature. Communication styles are a reflection on...