Culture in practice

The final stage of becoming culturally competent worker is the development of cultural practice skills.

You can build your own skills and:

• Learn about your own culture and world views
• Do you research – find out about cultures you don’t know about
• Ask questions directly if you don’t know
• Learn a few phrases of languages your customers speak

The literature (Kaur, 2009) has identified the following attributes as critical for cultural sensitive practice:

• cross cultural communication

(use of interpreters for Government services - TIS 131450) https://www.tisnational.gov.au/en/Agencies/Help-us...

• respectful engagement with CALD families
• knowledge of diverse practices and cultures
• culturally matched activities where appropriate and
• seeking advice from multicultural support services or bi-cultural workers

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3 Tips for working with interpreters:

1. Chunk your speech (group phrases together and give time for translation)
2. Don’t ask two or more questions at once
3. Don’t mimic the other person’s English (using poor grammar), speak naturally but be clear, slow down and check for understanding by asking open questions.

Don’t ask do you understand? You may always receive 'Yes' as your answer, this is so as not to lose face/embarrassment.

Instead, use an example or ask to paraphrase what you have just said. For example, "Can you repeat back what time your appointment is?"