We all choose to practice social work for the same reason: to make a difference, to make change. In 2012, The Academy for Professional Excellence established a Cultural Competency Academy (CCA) that provides integrated training on cultural responsiveness to improve the cultural awareness, knowledge and skills of providers in San Diego County’s Behavioral Health Services. Funded via a three-year contract with County of San Diego Behavioral Health Services using Mental Health Services Act funding, CCA uses innovative and evidence-based training methods to ensure trainees can implement changes in practice and the system of care to better meet the needs of San Diego’s increasingly diverse population. CCA is designed to create system change by providing training at every level of service. Program managers, direct service provides, and support staff are all enrolled in separate year-long intensive cultural competency training tracks with curriculum tailored to address their specific job responsibilities. CCA participants also work as a team to apply what they learn with a practicum to create lasting change back at their agency/program.
The current direct service cohort curriculum is on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer/Questioning (LGBTIQ) population. This training series is designed to improve service delivery to the LGBTIQ population, those attending receive in depth knowledge and skills based training including: history, statistics, self-assessment, outreach and engagement, trauma informed assessment, sexual orientation and treatment, and gender identity and treatment. Many training modalities are used to increase transfer of learning including: eLearning, in-person training, a lending library, coaching phone calls, inclusion of participants’ supervisors, and application in the workplace.
We all come in with our own world view and simply providing information does not easily shift how a person thinks or acts. Therefore before a participant learns new skills, sensitivity and reflective exercises are incorporated into foundational training. This allows the participant to connect with how alarming some of the disparities are and to view the world from a different perspective. For example, on the first day in a coming-out exercise participants are asked to write down the names of their loved ones, their job, their community, and their hopes and dreams. One by one they are asked to tear away each of those items representing its loss. They are then presented with statistics that support their imaged loss, such as 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ (Zavis, 2010) and 41% of those who identify as transgender have attempted suicide sometime in their life (National Center for Transgender Equality, 2011) allowing participants to gain a visceral understanding of how devastating losing a support system can be. In their self-assessment training, another foundational day of training, participants participate in a privilege walk. They stand in a line and are asked a series of questions while taking steps forward or back determined by how they answer. This activity illuminates how social identifiers, which are out of participant’s control, determine ones privilege. Throughout the series we invite individuals with experience in receiving mental health and drug and alcohol services who also identify as LGBTIQ to come and speak to the class. This allows participants to hear firsthand what clients look for in a social worker, how clients have been judged or disrespected, and most importantly how to apply the information learned in class to practice.
This training has been phenomenally effective. We are one third of the way through the current series and already there is evidence of change. Participants have shared that they have created in-service trainings to share the information they have learned with their entire programs, use gender neutral pronouns, put up safe space posters, revised intake forms, and now ask for preferred name instead of legal name. Many have expressed having a greater self-awareness of personal biases and try to recognize and avoid microaggressions, and report feeling more comfortable in asking for one’s sexual orientation and gender identity.
At the end of this year long training participants will present on what major change they have made in their program and practice, ultimately leading a better system and a more inclusive Behavioral Health Services.
If you would like to take our one-hour Introduction to LGBTIQ population eLearning you can do so by creating an account using this link.
Bibliography
National Center for Transgender Equality. (2011). Injustice at Every Turn: A report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.
Zavis, A. (2010, December 12). Gay and Homeless: In plain sight, a largely hidden population. Los Angeles Time, pp. http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/12/oca/la-me-gay-homeless-20101212.
Kellie Scott, MSW, is a graduate of the SDSU School of Social Work. She currently serves as the Cultural Competency Academy Coordinator at the Academy for Professional Excellence in San Diego.