Reference · Values and Ethics

Cultural competence and humility

The short answer

Social workers understand culture and its role in behavior, and they act against oppression and discrimination.[1] Cultural humility starts with reflecting on your own assumptions, and it treats clients as the experts on their own culture.[1] The duty reaches past the single client: social workers take social and political action to expand access and opportunity and to end discrimination.[2]

The key ideas

  • NASW 1.05 Cultural competence and humility

    Understand culture and its role in behavior, act against oppression and discrimination, practice cultural humility through self-reflection and treat clients as experts on their own culture, and learn about diversity including immigration status and ability.[1]

  • NASW 4.01-4.02 Professional competence and discrimination

    Accept work based on existing competence or intent to acquire it, keep current and base practice on recognized evidence-informed knowledge. Do not practice, condone, facilitate or collaborate in discrimination on any listed basis.[3]

  • NASW 6.01-6.04 Responsibilities to broader society

    Promote general welfare and social justice, facilitate public participation, provide professional services in public emergencies as far as possible, and engage in social and political action to expand access, choice and opportunity and to end discrimination.[2]

  • Empowerment approach

    Helps clients and communities gain power over decisions and resources, link personal troubles to social structures, and build skills and collective action. Rappaport framed empowerment as helping people with less than their fair share of power gain more; consistent with self-determination.[4][5]

  • Cultural formulation

    Clinicians weigh culture when diagnosing: note the person's cultural reference groups, cultural concepts of distress (idioms, explanatory models, syndromes such as susto), psychosocial stressors, and the clinician-client relationship. The DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview operationalizes this. Culture-bound concepts may not map onto a DSM diagnosis.[6]

How the ASWB exam tests it

  • Best answer usually asks the client about their cultural meaning rather than assuming.[1]
  • Evidence-based practice is an ethical expectation.[3]
  • Macro/advocacy items: social action is an ethical duty.[2]
  • Choose answers that increase client power and voice rather than doing things for the client.[4][5]
  • Assess culture before labeling a behavior pathological.[6]

The common trap

Assuming you know what a client's culture means to them. The best answer usually asks the client about their cultural meaning instead.[1]

Related explainers

Sources

  1. 1.NASW Code of Ethics (public page). www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English/Social-Workers-Ethical-Responsibilities-to-Clients
  2. 2.NASW Code of Ethics (public page). www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English/Social-Workers-Ethical-Responsibilities-to-the-Broader-Society
  3. 3.NASW Code of Ethics (public page). www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English/Social-Workers-Ethical-Responsibilities-as-Professionals
  4. 4.LibreTexts (open textbook). socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Social_Work_and_Human_Services/Introduction_to_Human_Services_(Pearce_et_al.)/10:_Serving_Communities/10.02:_Oppression_and_Power
  5. 5.LibreTexts (Introduction to Human Services). socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Social_Work_and_Human_Services/Introduction_to_Human_Services_(Pearce_et_al.)/10:_Serving_Communities/10.03:_Empowerment
  6. 6.SAMHSA TIP 59, Improving Cultural Competence (NCBI Bookshelf). www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/books/NBK248426/

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