7 Social justice and inclusion

Culturally competent practice in social work can take different approaches. Sue et al. (2016) believe that cultural competence is accomplished when cultural awareness is combined with skills, knowledge and a developmental perspective. This approach therefore fits with professional development and is an ongoing developmental practice. Cultural competence operates a values-based framework to working with people with lived experiences of services and colleagues.

This framework allows you to be intentional in relationship building and understand the individual’s experience of their culture, rather than attempting to learn generic aspects of each person’s culture (Laird and Tedam, 2019). There are different models of cultural competency available. Not all of them will be suitable to every situation and it is helpful to test what works in any specific situation.

Laird and Tedam (2019) suggest different methods, including:

• Developing a culturagram and cultural web
• Social GGRRAAACCEEESSS (Burnham, 2013)
• Papadopoulos, Tilki and Taylor model (Papadopoulos, Tilki and Taylor, 2016)
• MANDELA model of practice learning (Tedam, 2013)

You may already be aware of some of these models, or you may use others. The MANDELA model is particularly helpful for practice educators as it is developed for working in that role with learners. If you’d like to revisit any of these methods in more detail you can find links in the References section at the end of this course.

Another important focus for practice educators is adapting and responding to the different ways that people learn. The next section explores neurodiversity and practice learning.