Multicultural Counseling Competency a Counselor\'s Knowledge, Awareness,

Multicultural Counseling Competency

A counselor's knowledge, awareness, and skills concerning multicultural differences can have a significant impact on their ability to provide quality care (Penn and Post, 2012, p. 14-17). These multicultural competencies have therefore been recognized by counseling scholars as increasingly important, especially since American society is becoming more ethnically diverse. A recent study examined multicultural competencies among play therapists and found self-perceptions of competency to be independent of training. More recently, Penn and Post (2012) expanded on this finding by attempting to identify the factors that influence a play therapist's perceptions of their multicultural competency.

Critique

Penn and Post (2012) surveyed 510 members of the Association of Play Therapy to assess self-reported levels of multicultural competency, then compared these self-reports to records of multicultural training. The first set of findings revealed self-reported multicultural knowledge was inversely correlated with ignorance about the racial issues that minorities face. The second major contrasted with the results of the earlier study and revealed multicultural education, both formal and infused, was inversely correlated with awareness about the racial issues that minorities face in American society.

Together, these results suggest that multicultural education and training can have a significant impact on a therapist's racial sensitivity. As the authors mention, being aware of and sensitive to the racial issues clients face will not only increase the quality of care, but access to care. This also implies that the more aware a counselor becomes of the discrimination a client faces, the less discriminatory the care becomes. The obvious take-home message from these findings and conclusions is to participate when possible in multicultural education and training opportunities, in addition to encouraging minority clients to bring any racially-charged issues to my attention during therapy sessions.

Penn and Post (2012) discuss the concept of 'color-blindness', which implies an ignorance concerning the racial issues many minorities face. While becoming more aware of the discrimination minorities face through multicultural training is one way to reduce color-blindness, the other is to also recognize that a client's identity may be linked in a positive way with their ethnic and cultural roots. As a therapist, it would be incumbent upon me to be sensitive to both the discrimination that a client faces and the importance of their ethnic identity.

For example, the use of a racially diverse set of dolls during play therapy may provide some insight into the child's experience of themselves as a minority. If a minority child preferentially played with dolls of a similar racial appearance, to the exclusion of all others, then I might interpret this to imply that the home environment may be discouraging multicultural interactions. If the child preferentially played with light-skinned dolls, to the exclusion of all others, then I might be concerned that the child could be ashamed of their own racial identity. If the child did not discriminate between the different dolls, then I would still be mildly concerned, depending on the age of the child, about whether he or she is being overly protected from the racial discrimination that takes place in the real world.