Culturally Competent Practice: A Framework for Growth and Action

Doman Lum's book helps students understand the pioneering multicultural counseling competence literature and to build from this foundation a culturally competent social work perspective.

Culturally Competent Practice breaks new ground in cultural competency by presenting a model for understanding, measuring, and evaluating cultural competency. The book's practical, experiential approach and numerous exercises make it an excellent choice for courses at all levels. Lum goes beyond the usual and obvious differences as they relate to people of color to explain why cultural competency is important to human service professionals, and to demonstrate how to develop the skills necessary to become culturally competent--skills such as contact, problem identification, assessment, intervention, service delivery planning and implementation, and cultural skill research. The author takes a deeper look at more involved cultural issues, such as sexual preference and socioeconomic differences.

Doman Lum is professor emeritus of social work at California State University, Sacramento. He was recently featured in CELEBRATING SOCIAL WORK: FACES AND VOICES OF FORMATIVE YEARS, a book commemorating social work and social work education. His previous texts include SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE AND PEOPLE OF COLOR: A PROCESS-STAGE APPROACH; MULTIDIMENSIONAL PRACTICE: DIVERSITY IN CONTEXT; CULTURAL COMPETENCE, PRACTICE STAGES AND CLIENT SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY APPROACH; SOCIAL WORK AND HEALTH CARE POLICY; and RESPONDING TO SUICIDAL CRISIS. He has written articles on Asian Americans, health care delivery and health maintenance organizations, culturally diverse social work practice, suicide prevention, and pastoral counseling. Dr. Lum is a consulting editor for THE JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN SOCIAL WORK and ARETE, and has been on the board of directors and the Commission on Accreditation for the Council on Social Work Education. He received the Distinguished Recent Contributions in Social Work Education award from the Council on Social Work Education in 2000. He is an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, Northern California Conference.