Intro to Assessment
Assessing symptomatology, pathology, and determining a diagnosis are often what come to mind when we think of assessment. While this information may be important in some settings, it may not useful for educational and vocational planning.
In educational and vocational planning, the emphasis is instead on understanding the person’s overall functioning, including day to day routine, activities, the impact of trauma, marginalization and or any personal cultural needs / requirements, circumstances of the person’s living situation, family dynamics, socio-cultural environment, and the context in which all of these occur.
Additionally, we are focusing on strengths, interests, resilience, satisfactions, and accomplishments of the person.
These are the crucial factors needed to help an individual plan for accomplishing life’s goals.
Culturally Sensitive Approaches to Assessment and Intervention
Essential to being culturally sensitive is the ability to critically reflect on our actions and thoughts in order to become aware of our biases, values and cultural experiences in order to understand how this might impact how we work with people. It means a commitment to ongoing learning about unfamiliar cultures. Critical is the ability to manage power dynamics that could exist in a supporting relationship and building a partnership with the person you are supporting and their loved ones while acknowledging the limits of one’s understanding. Being culturally sensitive supports us to truly value and appreciate differing perspectives and engage people from a position of mutuality and respect.
Please see PSR Practice Competencies and Indicators for more information on the skills, knowledge and attitudes implicit in being culturally sensitive (https://www.psrrpscanada.ca/)
Canadian PSR Practice Competence Domain regarding Cultural Safety and Reconciliation is key to delivering safe and effective care. PSR competency A3 requires practitioners to demonstrate awareness of own cultural values and biases – in order to do so it is essential to reflect on your own experience, values as outlined above.