Cultural Competence and Cultural Safety

 Posted By: Debbie King | January 19th, 2010

Success Works has been privileged to undertake a number of projects with Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse communities.  In these projects and generally in our day to day work we subscribe to the concept of Cultural Safety.

Cultural Safety is ensuring that we, as consultants, understand and respect the different cultural understanding of the people we are working with and ensure that there is ‘no assault, challenge or denial of cultural identity’(1)  in our work.  More generally, cultural safety is a worldview that recognises the need to overcome cultural biases in our services and institutions in order to ensure that all individuals and communities have equal rights and equitable access to processes and services which are relevant to them.

Cultural safety starts from the standpoint of Cultural Competence.  Cultural competence is about recognising the cultural biases that all of us possess and taking steps to ensure that these biases are clearly acknowledged and that, to the extent possible, they do not get in the way of our practice.  Cultural competence allows one to understand that the way in which we experience and understand the world is only one way in which the world can be experienced and understood.

Culturally competent organisations are ones which:

• Demonstrate an understanding of their own dominant culture, including its implicit biases and assumptions
• Show a positive commitment towards the inclusion of individuals and communities from different cultural backgrounds
• Have knowledge of different cultural practices and cultural experiences and the influence of these on individual and group worldviews
• Are skilled and effective in cross cultural communication.

Success Works uses the following continuum to show the relationship between cultural awareness at the lowest level (the first step to cultural safety) and cultural safety at the other end.  Cultural awareness and cultural competence are both within the control of an organisation.  Cultural safety represents the experience of those who work in, access or use our services:

(1) Robyn Williams (nd) Cultural Safety: What does it mean for our work practice?

http//www.ruralhealth.utas.edu.au/inidigenous-health/Revised CulturalSafetyPaper-pha.pdf