Cultural competence training: A grant proposal

Abstract

It is imperative that social workers from the dominant culture understand the culture of the Latino clients they serve or the result will be a degradation in the quality of service. The use of interpreters may assuage the communication problem, but it does not eliminate it. It is necessary to understand the client's culture to be able to know how they will respond to certain questions, which subjects they will volunteer to talk about, and be able to place all of this within the context of their culture. This thesis describes a grant proposal funded by California Endowment that will train the social workers at the Bienvenidos Family Center in East Los Angeles, to enhance their cultural competence and make them aware of cultural differences to make the delivery of health services more efficacious. The actual submission and/or funding of this grant were not a requirement for the successful completion of the project.