A multiculturally oriented human services professional must be aware of personal limits and strengths, have a plan for seeking feedback from clients, and have a plan for addressing limitations. The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to develop a personal plan for being a multiculturally oriented human services professional. This assignment will help students to identify strengths and areas for growth, increase confidence in addressing cultural conflicts, and encourage self-awareness.
Write a 4-5 page paper (not counting the title page and reference page). You do not need to write an abstract. Follow current APA professional style standards. Cite and reference our textbooks, Cultural Engagement, by Chatraw and Prior (2019), and Cultural Humility, by Hook et al. (2017) as sources used for support in your paper. Cite and reference a website or document used in describing one potential cultural training course, and one peer-reviewed journal article from the past 5 years. The peer-reviewed journal article that you use for this paper must be a scholarly source, not a book, newspaper article, online blog, book review, or magazine article.
These four sources are required for this paper. Limit the use of direct quotes. You may use Scripture as well (see the Writing Style Guide tab for how to cite and reference Bible versions that you quote.
Begin with a brief paper introduction before going to your first section/heading (do not use a heading for the introduction). Because you are writing about your personal plan for multicultural orientation, it is appropriate to use first person pronouns (I, me, my, for example) in this paper.
Use the following bold headings:
Limitations and Strengths: What limits or weaknesses relevant to multicultural orientation do you recognize in yourself? What are your strengths, skills, and resources for multicultural orientation? Use honest self-reflection and awareness to discuss specific potential limitations and strengths.
Plan for Seeking Feedback: Describe your plan for obtaining regular feedback from clients about how they feel their cultural identities are being addressed in therapy/services. Cite Hook et al. (2017) in this section. What specific questions might you ask a client that would demonstrate multicultural orientation? How else can you plan for feedback (for example, discuss your openness to feedback from colleagues and supervisors)?
Plan for Addressing Limitations: Find and discuss one training course and one professional reading that would be helpful in addressing multicultural limitations or weaknesses that you identified. You do not need to actually attend a training course; this is for practice in locating resources. Read, cite and reference one peer-reviewed journal article from the last five years that represents a professional reading that improves your knowledge and understanding of a multicultural limitation you have identified. Discuss and explain what you learned from this article that will help you to be more multiculturally oriented.
One website you may find helpful is pesi.com (this is an organization that helps professionals find seminars or trainings). You can search behavioral health seminars at pesi.com for one that addresses a multicultural need you have. Search for upcoming events at counseling.org (the American Counseling Association website), apa.org, or AACC.net (the website for the American Association of Christian Counselors). When you find a seminar, look for multicultural topics.
End with a Conclusion section where you summarize what you covered in your paper. What did you learn from this assignment? What goals do you have for improving your multicultural orientation?
