Multicultural Work with Individuals, Families and Groups

SW729, Section 001

This course will focus on how to implement methods that are sensitive to a wide variety of human differences for multicultural social work with individuals, families, groups. Students will learn to apply theories and concepts of culture and other human differences to understand and work with diversity in individual, family, and group functioning. Students will critique prevailing models of multicultural practice in relation to their sensitivity to issues in different groups. Students will be encouraged to deepen their own multicultural competence and consciousness by: 1) learning how to use and adjust for the impact of their own characteristics and experiences on a) their perceptions and values of others' behaviors, and b) the behaviors that clients choose to display in interactions with them; and 2) assessing how the larger contexts of the practice setting and society influence their clients and therapeutic relationships. Students will also learn to assess and address how societal power and status structures and the dynamics of privilege and oppression contribute to the creation of differences, to the types of problems that clients experience, and to miscommunication and distrust in therapeutic relationships.