Race, Place, Space: Meanings of Cultural Competence in Three Child Welfare Agencies‪.‬

In the social work literature, there is a broad consensus on the need for social services providers to take matters of culture into account. A number of texts and training materials promoting culturally competent practice have emerged during the past two decades (for example, Cross, Bazron, Dennis, & Isaacs, 1989; Devore & Schlesinger, 1996; Green, 1982; Lum, 1999; Orlandi, 1992; Roberts et al., 1990; Sue, 1990). The effort to achieve culturally competent practice has been declared "a journey whose time has come" (Lum, p. 175). Most writings on cultural competence depict the worker as the sojourner who travels across cultural divides. For example, in Lum's (1999) conception, "cultural competency is a process and arrival point for the social worker. The worker achieves cultural competency after developing cultural awareness, mastering knowledge and skills, and implementing an inductive learning methodology" (p. 175). Thus, training and education in cultural competence in social work service delivery has targeted workers, with the goals of broadening self-awareness, enhancing knowledge of the differences that clients bring to the helping encounter, and enriching or adapting the range of intervention strategies on which they draw (Lum; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1995).