Culturally Responsive

A core value in a system of care is to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services (CLAS) for children, youth and families. A culturally responsive system values diversity, understands differences and develops services and supports to meet the unique needs of each community.

Cultural competence is the ability to successfully engage with children, youth and families who come from a culture or cultures other than our own. It entails developing certain personal and interpersonal awareness and sensitivities, understanding certain bodies of cultural knowledge, and mastering a set of skills that, taken together, underlie effective cross-cultural and culturally responsive services and supports.

Culture is often defined and perceived as the celebration of important people, religions, traditions, and holidays, as well as an appreciation of the customs of different groups. It is also more than that. Culture is as much, or as little, as the everyday experiences, people, events, smells, sounds, and habits of behavior that characterize individuals’ lives.

Cultural Responsiveness

Cultural responsiveness can be summarized and described as a continuum.

Cultural Destructiveness

Attitudes, policies, structures and practices within a system or organization that are destructive to a cultural group.

Example: Agencies expect individuals from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds to fit into the existing treatment program rather than adapting the program to each client to provide culturally congruent services.
Cultural Incapacity

Lack of capacity of systems and organizations to respond effectively to the needs, interests and preference of culturally and linguistically diverse groups.

Example: Expecting clients from diverse backgrounds to conform to services rather than the agency being flexible and adapting services to meet client needs. Treatment of diverse individuals limits their active participation in treatment planning or minimizing the need for culturally supportive treatment services.
Cultural Blindness

Express philosophies of viewing and treating all people as the same.

Example: Assuming that all cultural groups are alike and have similar experiences. Organizations can rationalize that “good” treatment services will suffice for all clients regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or class.
Cultural Pre-responsiveness

A level of awareness within systems or organizations of their strengths and areas for growth to respond effectively to culturally and linguistically diverse populations.

Example: Care coordinators acknowledge a need for more training specific to the populations they serve at this level of development. They acknowledge the need to attend more to ethnicity, race, and culture in the provision of services, but they probably lack the information and skills necessary to translate their recognition into behavioral change. Even so, they are open to training, recognize the importance of developing cultural competence, and have taken small steps to improve their clinical knowledge.
Cultural Responsiveness

The ability to learn from and relate respectfully with people of your own cultural as well as those from other cultures.

Example: Care coordinators are committed to becoming culturally competent, acknowledging significant differences across and within races, ethnicities, and cultural groups. They know that these differences need to be integrated into assessment, treatment planning, and services.
Cultural Proficiency

Policies and practices in an organization or the values and behaviors of an individual, that enables the person or institution to engage effectively with peoples and groups who are different from them.

Example: Organizations are aware of the importance of integrating services that are compatible with diverse populations. There is an ongoing commitment to workforce development, training, and evaluation; development of culturally specific and congruent services; and continual performance evaluation and improvement.

Understanding culture is important so that we understand how we interact with individuals from cultures that are different from ours. This understanding helps us see our children, youth and families more clearly, and shape policies and practice in ways that will help them succeed. To be culturally responsive, it is important that expectations reflect the values and cultures of children, youth and families in our children’s mental health system.

Advancing Health Equity (PDF)

The National CLAS Standards

The National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care (The National CLAS Standards) aim to improve health care quality and advance health equity by establishing a framework for organizations to serve the nation's increasingly diverse communities.