Toward a Theory of Cultural Competence in Transcultural Parenting: The Role of Cultural Receptivity

ABSTRACT

There is a dire need to place the disproportionate number of minority foster children with successful foster families. Because there are more minority foster children than minority foster parents, we suggest placing children with qualified families despite differences in racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. We propose a conceptual model for transcultural parenting that accounts for cultural differences and emphasizes the importance of equipping foster parents with training to preserve children's birth heritages and help them thrive in dual worlds. We address how essential it is for agencies to assess foster parents' cultural receptivity, that is, their openness to participate in activities that stimulate children's cultural development. We suggest a theoretical framework that integrates cultural receptivity and culturally competent transcultural parenting.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment
• cultural competence
• foster care
• foster parents
• transcultural
• transracial

Notes

Acknowledgement: Casey Family Programs supported this work. This research was conducted for the fulfillment of Coakley's doctoral dissertation at the University of Tennessee and was presented at the Ohio State University Seventeenth National Symposium on Doctoral Research in Social Work on April 16, 2005. The authors thank Casey Family Programs, Niki LeProhn, John Orme, Kathryn Rhodes, Mary Ellen Cox, Gary Cuddeback, and Donna Cherry for their support and contributions to the overall Casey Home Assessment Protocol study. We also thank Terri Combs-Orme for her helpful suggestions during the development of this article.

1. The Adoption Questionnaire was later validated as the Transracial Adoption Parenting Scale (α = 0.91), a multidimensional 36-item Likert-type scale that measures cultural competence among transracial adoptive parents (Massatti, Vonk, & Gregoire, 2004).