Cultural Competency
As a Community Mental Health Center based in Minneapolis, with satellite offices in Brooklyn Park and Minnetonka and multiple school-based offices in Minneapolis, Bloomington and Eden Prairie Public Schools, Washburn Center for Children serves families from many backgrounds. The families who choose to come Washburn continue to become more culturally diverse. Since 2003 the percentage of clients from communities of color has increased from 44% to 56% and the number of Latino clients has more than doubled.
Over the last five years, Washburn Center for Children has provided extensive training and professional development activities related to cultural competency and has added seven staff across the agency who are fluent in Spanish.
One of the agency’s strategic goals is to provide training and consultation for professionals in the community, at Washburn and for students. Understanding cultural dynamics is recognized as critical to providing effective and respectful service and as a primary training need in many fields. An organizational cultural competency self-assessment initially conducted in 2003 and updated in 2009 has helped focus our training priorities on education and consultation related to cultural competency and internal team-building and communication.
Washburn Center for Children has supported many efforts and made progress in the areas of fostering diversity and cultural competence in the agency. An example is the “Building Cross-Cultural Competence” series started in 2008 to increase Washburn Center for Children’s ability to work effectively with the range of diverse families and children who come for services. This comprehensive program led by Dr. William Allen builds expertise in identifying potential barriers to success with families, and the resources that can overcome these barriers. The program works on both the individual and team level to ensure that organizational transformation occurs as an adjunct to staff development.
Washburn also works to improve services by requesting feedback from parents. In 2008 for example, 88% of parents whose children received Outpatient services who responded to the agency’s satisfaction survey reported, “The services received at Washburn were sensitive to our cultural needs” (the remaining 12% were neutral).
Increasing cultural competency involves effective systems, staff development and recruitment, measuring outcomes, and training new professionals entering the field. As a community agency serving over 1,800 children per year and training over 50 students from the undergraduate to Postdoctoral level each year, Washburn Center for Children is committed to providing training and consultation to teams and individuals to increase self-awareness and cultural knowledge. Through Washburn’s internship programs the agency supported the training, development and supervision of students of color working to become therapists, social workers and psychologists in the community.