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Training Description
“Promoting Multicultural Competence and Social Justice
in the Mental Health Professions” is a national tour that
is designed to promote multicultural competence and social justice
to mental health professionals, students, faculty members and
other interested community persons. This national tour is being
offered by the National Institute for Multicultural Competence
(NIMC). The NIMC is comprised of a group of internationally-respected
multicultural and social justice advocates who recognize that
the fields of education and mental health professions are entering
a new era.
The purpose of this national tour is threefold:
First, it is designed to enhance a greater understanding of the
types of competencies counselors, psychologists, and social workers
need to acquire to work more effectively, respectfully, and ethically
within our culturally-diverse 21st Century society. To accomplish
this goal, the presenters will provide information about the 34
fundamental multicultural counseling competences that have been
developed by the Association for Multicultural Counseling and
Development (AMCD) and endorsed by six professional associations
in the American Counseling Association (ACA). The presenters will
also refer to the set of multicultural guidelines that have more
recently been endorsed by the American Psychological Association
(APA) in promoting a greater understanding as to what it means
to be a culturally-competent mental health professional in our
contemporary society.
To further achieve this goal, the presenter will use video-taped
demonstrations of counseling and psychotherapy role-plays that
involve persons from diverse cultural-racial groups. This training
strategy will clearly model some of the techniques and approaches
that culturally-competent practitioners can use to more effectively
and respectfully promote the mental health and psychological development
of persons from diverse groups and backgrounds in the future.
Second, the national tour is designed to foster an increased
understanding of the intimate links that exist between the various
forms of social injustice that continue to be perpetuated in the
United States and the mental health of millions of persons in
our society.
To achieve this end, the presenter will: (a) discuss the kinds
of competencies mental health professionals need to acquire to
work effectively as social justice advocates; and (b) present
several practical intervention models that have been tested and
found to be effective in fostering the personal well-being of
larger number of persons from culturally and racially-different
groups in the United States.
Third, the presenter will work with those persons who participate
in this professional development program, by brainstorming practical
things they can do to advocate for a greater level of multicultural
competence and social justice in the training programs, universities,
and communities where they live and work. To achieve this aspect
of the project, the presenter will outline a number of “multicultural
organizational development” strategies that have been effective
in promoting the tenets of multiculturalism and social justice
counseling over the past decade.
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