Cultural relevance as program‐to‐community alignment

Abstract

Calls for cultural sensitivity in the design and implementation of human services programs have become a standard response to the increasing diversity among the families and communities being served. In this article, we take a critical look at the construct, using data from a multiyear evaluation of a statewide family support program. We examine how selected, locally implemented programs operationalize the state program's cultural sensitivity standard, using both etic and emic approaches; that is, we apply extant cultural competence definitions to assess program cultural sensitivity and document how the program staff articulated their approach to the cultural sensitivity. Findings suggest that programs focus more directly on the immediate cultural relevance of their services, rather than on developing more generalized competencies among their staff. Further, findings indicate that program-to-community alignment may well be a more useful representation of how programs address cultural issues. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Calls for cultural sensitivity in the design and implementation of human services programs have become a standard response to the increasing diversity among the families and communities being served. This program disposition, described interchangeably as cultural competence, cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, cultural responsiveness, and the achievement of cultural ''match,'' has significant cachet in the practice literature, although there are few precise definitions of what it is and little research on its effectiveness. In this article, we take a critical look at the construct, using data from a multi-year evaluation of a statewide family support program. We examine how selected, locally implemented programs operationalize the state program's cultural sensitivity standard and discuss the implications of our findings for the development of a more contextualized construct.The program under discussion provides support and information to first-time parents-age 20 and under-toward the goal of optimizing children's development, reducing child maltreatment and repeat pregnancies, and encouraging parental educational and economic achievement. The program model has a set of specific standards to which locally implemented programs are expected to adhere, including the requirement that services be offered within a culturally sensitive framework, i.e., relevant for the particular communities being served. Embedded in a large-scale evaluation that included both implementation-focused and outcome-focused components, 1 the present study was designed to apply extant cultural competence definitions to assess the extent to which locally implemented programs were addressing the cultural sensitivity standard and to understand how the program staff articulated their approach to cultural sensitivity. BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE

Examining the service‐related experiences and outcomes of caregivers involved in a system of care who experienced everyday discrimination

“…We predicted that more positive views of services would be linked to healthier caregiver outcomes, particularly among the caregivers reporting more frequent experiences of everyday discrimination. As reflected in prior work, cultural competence is a complex, multifaceted construct that involves attitudes, practices, policies, and service structures (Huey, Tilley, Jones, & Smith, ; Mistry, Jacobs, & Jacobs, ).…”