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From April 2002 NASW NEWS Others Interested in NASW Standards
Many diverse organizations want help developing their own standards. By John V. O'Neill, MSW, NEWS Staff The newly printed NASW Standards for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice have spurred many requests from other organizations for help in developing their own cultural competence standards and from NASW chapters interested in workshops on the issue. NASW's national personnel responsible for staffing the development of the standards also have been asked to make presentations to other organizations. Typical was a Feb. 6 workshop NASW presented in Washington, D.C., at the Intercultural Cancer Council's 8th Biennial Symposium on Minorities, the Medically Underserved and Cancer. The five-hour program for some of the 1,200 participants who came to the symposium to learn how to deliver services better to minorities was conducted by Clara Simmons, who chairs the National Committee on Racial and Ethnic Diversity (NCORED); Elizabeth J. Clark, NASW executive director; Leticia Diaz, NASW senior staff associate; and Luisa Lopez, NASW affirmative action officer. "I am struck by the diversity of organizations interested in this subject matter," Diaz said later. "We appear to have done something first that other organizations are struggling with and are asking for our input." Among groups requesting NASW collaboration in developing cultural competence principles of their own or asking NASW to make presentations were the Hispanic Health Alliance, the Child Welfare League of America and the Center for School Mental Health Assistance at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Chapters asking for workshops included those in Virginia, West Virginia, Idaho and Wisconsin. The standards were developed because of the vision of NCORED, an NASW bylaws-mandated committee whose charge includes the promotion and development of knowledge, theory and practice as related to specific populations, said Diaz. In 1997, when NCORED members asked NASW to generate cultural competence standards, they were advised of the normal procedure, including bringing together a panel of experts and identifying a source of funding. Believing that the nation's demographics were changing so rapidly that it was urgent to develop cultural competence, NCORED members petitioned NASW's Professional Development and Advocacy Committee, asking to be designated as the lead team to produce the standards. When they got a go-ahead, a subcommittee developed a first draft with much input from Emma Montero, who works for welfare services in Los Angeles, and other committee members, said Diaz. The subcommittee included Saundra Starks of Western Kentucky University, Lina Fong of Marywood University, Inderjit Jaipaul of Temple University and Carmen Ortiz Hendricks of Hunter College. A draft of the standards was made public in late 2000, and hundreds of comments came back, many of which were incorporated in the final 32-page printed document, said Diaz. Before printed copies of the standards were delivered in January, there were already calls inquiring how NASW went about setting the standards, said Diaz. "We found we were on the cutting edge of something going on in many sectors of society." Diaz said NCORED believes that to properly disseminate the standards, there needs to be a "training of trainers," a curriculum and a "tool kit" so those interested in helping others or teaching cultural competence can work from standardized information. For standards: www.socialworkers.org/pubs/standards/cultural.htm Back to NASW NEWS Contents
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