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Multicultural Counseling Competency A Counselor's Knowledge, Awareness, Essay

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...

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…

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Penn, Saundra L. And Post, Phyllis B. (2012). Investigating various dimensions of play therapists' self-reported multicultural counseling competence. International Journal of Play Therapy, 21(1), 14-29.
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