| Recognize the importance of culture and respect
diversity. |
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Complete a self-assessment to determine your own beliefs about
culture. |
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Encourage staff to complete self-assessments in order to understand their
own cultures and worldviews; examine their own attitudes, values, and beliefs
about culture; and acknowledge cultural differences. |
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Assess capabilities of the counselors to understand and respect the values,
customs, beliefs, language, and interpersonal style of the disaster survivor. |
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Seek evidence that you/staff respect the importance of verbal and nonverbal
communication, space, social organization, time, and environment control
within various cultures. |
| Maintain a current profile of the cultural composition
of the community. |
|
Develop and periodically update a community profile that describes the
community’s composition in terms of race and ethnicity, age, gender,
religion, refugee and immigrant status, housing status, income and poverty
levels, percentage of residents living in rural versus urban areas, unemployment
rate, language and dialects, literacy level, and number of schools and businesses. |
|
Include in the profile information about the values, beliefs, social and
family norms, traditions, practices, and politics of local cultural groups,
and historical racial relations or ethnic issues. |
|
Gather information in consultation with community cultural leaders who
represent and understand local cultural groups. |
| Recruit disaster workers who are representative
of the community or service area. |
|
Review the community profile when recruiting disaster crisis counseling
workers and attempt to recruit workers from the ethnic and cultural groups
included among the survivors. |
|
If workers from the community or service area are not available, recruit
others with backgrounds and language skills similar to those of local residents. |
|
Assess disaster workers’ personal attributes, knowledge, and skills
as they relate to cultural competence. |
| Provide ongoing cultural competence training to
disaster mental health staff. |
|
Offer ongoing cultural competence training (e.g., in-service training
and regularly scheduled meetings) to service providers, administrators and
managers, language and sign interpreters, and temporary staff. |
|
Involve community-based groups with expertise in cultural competence or
in the needs of specific cultures. |
|
Allot time for training participants to examine and assess their values,
attitudes, and beliefs about their own and other cultures. |
| Ensure that services are accessible, appropriate,
and equitable. |
|
Identify and take steps to overcome reluctance of ethnic groups to use
services because of mistrust of the system or previous inequitable treatment. |
|
Identify and take steps to eliminate service barriers that occur as a
result of racial and ethnic discrimination, language barriers, transportation
issues, and the stigma associated with counseling services. |
|
Involve representatives of diverse cultural groups in program committees,
planning boards, and policy-setting bodies and in decision making. |
|
Identify and use strategies to address specific concerns of refugees
who had negative experiences that make them suspicious of government intervention. |
| Recognize the role of help-seeking behaviors,
customs and traditions, and natural support networks. Identify and use strategies
to: |
|
Identify cultural patterns that may influence help-seeking behaviors.
|
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Build trusting relationships and rapport with disaster survivors. |
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Recognize that survivors may find traditional relief procedures confusing
or difficult. |
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Recognize individual cultures’ customs and traditions related to
healing, trauma, and loss, and identify how these customs and traditions
influence an individual’s receptivity to and need for assistance. |
|
Acknowledge cultural beliefs about healing and recognize their importance
to some disaster survivors. |
|
Help survivors reestablish rituals; organize culturally appropriate anniversary
activities and commemorations. |
|
Recognize that outreach efforts focused only on the individual may not
be effective for people whose cultures are centered around family and community. |
|
Determine who is significant in survivors’ families and social spheres
by listening to their descriptions of the home, family, and community. |
| Involve community leaders and organizations representing
diverse cultural groups as cultural brokers. |
|
Collaborate with trusted leaders (e.g., spiritual leaders, clergy members,
and teachers) who know the community. |
|
Invite organizations representing cultural groups and other special interest
groups in the community to participate in disaster mental health program
planning and service delivery. |
|
Collaborate with community-based organizations to communicate with the
cultural groups they represent. |
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Identify effective ways to work with informal culture-specific groups. |
|
Coordinate with other public and private agencies in responding to the
disaster. |
| Ensure that services and information are culturally
and linguistically competent. |
|
Identify indigenous workers who speak the language of the survivors; use
interpreters only when necessary. |
|
Identify trained interpreters who share the disaster survivors’
cultural backgrounds. |
|
Determine the dialect of the disaster survivor before asking for an interpreter. |
|
Assess the level of acculturation of the interpreter in relation to that
of the disaster survivors. |
|
Establish a plan for providing written materials in languages other than
English and at the literacy level of the target population. |
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Provide means to reach people who are deaf or hard of hearing. |
|
Consult with cultural groups in the community to determine the most effective
outreach activities. |
|
Use existing community resources (e.g., multicultural television and radio
stations) to enhance outreach efforts. |
| Assess and evaluate the program’s level
of cultural competence. |
|
Continuously assess the program to identify and correct problems that
may impede the delivery of culturally competent services. |
|
Incorporate process evaluation into the crisis counseling program. |
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Involve representatives of various cultural groups in process evaluation. |
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Communicate process evaluation findings to key informants and cultural
groups engaged in the program. |
