A Study of the Dilemma of Cultural Competence

Reconstruction of Cultural Competencies in Social Work

Abstract

Cultural competence refers to an ability to interact effectively with people of different cultures. Cultural competence comprises four components: (a) Awareness of one's own cultural worldview, (b) Attitude towards cultural differences, (c) Knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and (d) cross-cultural skills. Developing cultural competence results in an ability to understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures. In order to reconstruct the problem within the current cultural competence framework, we tried to analyze the previous studies and clarify the dilemmas of cultural competence ㏌ social work, based on the findings obtained from this review. The aim of the study is to further examine cultural competence and reexamine standard theories that are prevalent in social work today. We used the search engine "Scopus" and filtered the articles that included the keywords "cultural competence", "social work", and "dilemma" in the title or abstract. Afterwards, we went through the resulting ten articles. From the findings, we found that there were five perspectives on dilemmas in relation to cultural competence in social work, which are as follows. (1) Cultural competence is widespread among social workers but the fact of the matter is that there still must be a recognition that society has a structure of oppression that must be dealt with. (2) The principles of "Do no harm" and "respect for diversity" are often in conflict when meeting cultures who disrespect certain human rights we hold as fundamental in Social Work. (3) External conflict between the social worker and the minority community they service that hold opposing values or beliefs (4) Internal Conflict in which a practitioner holds certain core beliefs which threaten their ability to provide superior service to a client. (5) Social workers should work to alert their employers and colleagues about policies within the organization that are inadequate, oppressive, unfair, or harmful.