Putting Racism on the Table: The Implementation and Evaluation of a Novel Racial Equity and Cultural Competency Training/Consultation Model in New York City

ABSTRACT

This article presents the findings of a mixed-methods study of a racial equity and cultural competency training and case consultation model for child welfare practitioners. Findings suggest that the model enhanced participants’ capacity for effective practice with diverse populations. A pretest/posttest instrument and evaluation revealed statistically significant increases of participants’ awareness, knowledge, and skills related to culturally diverse populations. In addition, qualitative interview participants described the model as being highly influential and provided evidence of the development of the key skills for culturally effective practice.

KEYWORDS:

• African-American population
• biracial or multiracial
• child welfare
• Hispanic/Latino population
• social work education and training

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Corrigendum

Funding

The implementation of the RE & CC case consultation model was funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the RE & CC Committee Co-Chair in 2009, Deputy Commissioner Elizabeth Roberts, who participated in the development of the initial offering of the model and contributed significantly to the design of the quantitative instruments utilized in this study. In addition, Associate Commissioner Andrea Reid provided key support in the development and implementation of the training and consultation model delivered to contracted provider agency partners in 2011. The authors also wish to acknowledge graduate students Julia Shu-Huah Wang, Kate Brown, and Patrick Quigley for their research assistance and contributions to this study.

Notes

¹ These materials drew upon Comas-Diaz & Jacobson’s (1991) work on ethnocultural transference and countertransference and described a number of common treatment issues related to clinicians and clients from different racial/cultural backgrounds.

² Research participants were supervisors, case planners, and managers from the preventive and foster care agencies contracted by New York City Administration for Children’s Services. Agency directors identified training participants from each agency. As a result, some participants were voluntary and others participated at the request of the director. The majority of the participants were female. The pretest and posttest instruments were distributed by members of the research team and a graduate research assistant. In order to track data pre- and post-training, while maintaining confidentiality, participants were asked to write their mothers’ first initial and birth date (month/day only) at the top of the questionnaire.

³ All participant names are pseudonyms.