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Cultural Diversity and Access to Essential Resources

(6 CEUs in Cultural Relations for Full Day; 3 CEUs for the Half-Day Course)

Course Description

This new course is the second of two half-day workshops based on elements of the six-hour workshop, Diversity and Cultural Relations. The other is the half-day Cultural Diversity and the Helping Professions, most recently offered in February of 2008. While the two half-day workshops are offered as distinct and stand-alone courses, they are natural complements to one another.

People in the helping professions see working for positive social change, which includes addressing the causes and effects of oppression, as a significant part of their mission. With that in mind, this course focuses on the ways in which cultural diversity informs the access of people to essential resources such as affordable housing, education, and health care.

An enhanced understanding of this connection between diversity and access can only strengthen the powers of practitioners of the helping professions to meet the needs of clients and to address social problems involving impediments to the fair and just enjoyment of essential resources by all people. We will pay particularly close attention to how an improved understanding and appreciation of clients’ cultural and social backgrounds, as well as societal attitudes towards these backgrounds, can further the ability of the helping professional to effectively meet clients’ needs.

Learning Objectives

Participants who complete this course should be able to:

Identify and explain various kinds of diversity among people
Articulate the shared understanding in the helping professions of the nature and value of diversity in people, as expressed in the NASW Code of Ethics
Explain the differences between tolerance, acceptance, and welcoming, and how these apply to social and cultural diversity
Identify ways in which an understanding of diversity can help those in the helping professions to better serve client populations, in a variety of settings
Give examples of the effects of cultural diversity on access to essential resources such as affordable housing, education, and health care

Course Outline

I. Introduction

       A. Cultural diversity and access to essential resources: three examples
       B. The official stand of the profession, as expressed in
             The Code of Ethics of the NASW
       C. Example from DSM IV-TR

II.    Cultural diversity and access to essential resources: some general issues

       A. Diversity of need
       B. Adjustment challenges for clients
       C. Population-dependent variations in prevalence of specific concerns
       D. Communication by clients of specific concerns
       E. Culture-bound challenges (includes DSM-IV-TR appendix)
       F. Discrimination

III. Diversity and difference

       A. Acceptance, tolerance, and welcoming
       B. The significance of language, vocabulary, and terminology, on the part
            of the community

IV. Removing barriers to understanding and welcoming diversity,
         beginning with ourselves

       A. Familiarization and attendant flexibility (with an illustration from DSM-IV-TR)
       B. Removing the myths
       C. Critical thinking about culture
       D. Empathy
       E. Awareness of commonality
       F. Attention to language, vocabulary, and terminology

VI. Beginning to remove barriers to access to essential resources

       A. Communication and its facilitation: three pathways
       B. Research, investigation, experience, and experiment
       C. Education and cultural interaction
       D. Promising directions in public policy
       E. Two social virtues: cultural sensitivity and imagination
       F. Concluding thought: easing suspicion and anxiety

Bibliography and suggestions for further reading

Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. Approved by the 1996 NASW Delegate Assembly and revised by the 1999 NASW Delegate Assembly.
www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp

DSM-IV-TR: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition, text revision. American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

Three Special Articles in the The New England Journal of Medicine, 353:7, August 18, 2005. Online edition: http://content.nejm.org/content/vol353/issue7/index.shtml

Beauchamp, Tom L., et al, eds. Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2008.

Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Hillerman, Tony. The First Eagle. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.

Kant, Immanuel. “What is Enlightenment?” In Perpetual Peace and Other Essays. Ted Humphrey, translator. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985.

Mappes, Thomas and Jane Zembaty, eds. Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. See especially Chapter 5, “Pornography, Hate Speech, and Censorship”, and Chapter 7, “Social and Economic Justice”.

Nussbaum, Martha. “Judging Other Cultures: The Case of Genital Mutilation”. From Sex and Social Justice. (Oxford, 1999) Reprinted in Feinberg, Joel, and Russ Shafer-Landau, eds. Reason and Responsibility. 13th ed. Wadsworth, 2008.

Shanahan, Timothy and Robin Wang, eds. Reason and Insight - Western and Eastern Perspectives on the Pursuit of Moral Wisdom. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth (Thomson Learning), 2003.

University of Michigan News Service. “U. S. Supreme Court Rules on University of Michigan Cases”. June 23, 2003. www.umich.edu/news/Releases/2003/Jun03/supremecourt.html

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