Five ways practitioners can correct cultural mistakes

Practitioners committed to culturally responsive practice may inadvertently make cultural mistakes influenced by hidden biases. These mistakes are rooted in the practitioners’ own experiences and cultural perspectives and may include verbal, nonverbal and environmental slights.

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of practice. Having the tools to repair them is an integral part of your skillset.

Here are five ways practitioners can correct cultural mistakes.

1. Recognise a mistake

Recognising a mistake is not always easy. Families may be reluctant to disclose negative feelings about you as the practitioner or the therapy itself, and you may have difficulty recognising families’ negative feelings.¹ Identifying when families are beginning to withdraw from the service can be a helpful sign, indicating that something has shifted and is getting in the way of developing the therapeutic relationship.

2. Being accountable

Being accountable is crucial in your role as practitioner, especially due to the inherent power imbalance in this work. When you take responsibility for a mistake, it creates a safe space for the family to acknowledge that something has gone wrong and share their experience of this if they choose.

You can approach these conversations with mindfulness, engaging in reflection and carefully offering space for the family to express their thoughts and feelings, without resorting to justifications or excuses. This approach promotes transparency and trust in the practitioner-family relationship.

3. Intentional relationship building

The nature of the relationship between yourself and the family will determine its ability to withstand tensions and enable constructive dialogue to strengthen the relationship going forward. Families tend to follow practitioners when they change jobs, rather than building new relationships with another practitioner.²

4. Cross-cultural communication

Communicating across cultures and languages can heighten the chances of making mistakes. Effective interpreting may reduce the likelihood of cultural mistakes by providing opportunities for shared understandings to be relayed and developed, assist the processing of information, the sharing of ideas and thoughts, and accessing of memories. Although finding an appropriate interpreter promptly and ensuring message accuracy can be challenging, it is a service that families may find helpful.

Victorian Transcultural Mental Health offers more information about working with interpreters:

5. Cultural humility

‘For me, cultural humility is about understanding myself, my values, my affinities and biases, my attitudes and behaviours and how these affect the people around me.’

– Dr Olivia O’Donoghue, General Practitioner (GP)³

In contrast to cultural competency, cultural humility orients the practitioner to the uniqueness of each client. It’s about learning from the client while empowering them to become an equal partner in treatment decisions.⁴

Cultural humility involves five key components:

• A lifelong motivation to learn from others
• Critical self-examination of cultural awareness
• Interpersonal respect
• Developing mutual partnerships that address power imbalances
• An other-oriented stance open to new ways of cultural information

These components guide the practitioner and minimise the chances of them imposing their dominant ideas and thoughts in conversations with families.⁵

What next?

You can find out more in our free online course, Culturally responsive practice strategies for children’s mental health. In this course, you will explore skills to effectively and confidently engage with children and families from cultural communities different to your own. But before you start this course, we recommend completing our introductory course, Understanding children’s mental health in culturally diverse communities.

Log in or start learning today.

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