2.3.1 Cultural Competency

Cultural expectations, norms and traditions may interfere with effective communication between the survivor, the healthcare providers and you, the advocate.

To navigate this, learn how to practice cultural competency so that you can understand our own cultural values, respect the survivor’s cultural values and accept the differences between them.

Cultural competency is also necessary in the health center context, where cultural attitudes may become barriers to healthcare providers offering an appropriate set of services to survivors of sexual assault.

For example, cultural attitudes influence:

  1. What it means to be a survivor of sexual assault;

  2. How emotion is expressed and shared;

  3. The role of the family in supporting the survivor;

  4. If and how a survivor seeks help;

  5. Whether or not a survivor shares private matters with strangers;

  6. The understanding of cause and effect in sexual assault;

  7. Expectations of how the survivor should act and feel;

  8. What type of help and services the survivor or the health providers believe are necessary;

  9. Ideas concerning recovery, empowerment, retribution and revenge; and

  10. What a survivor expects from you as an advocate and how you respond to the survivor.

Once you accept cultural differences, you can begin to understand cultural dynamics and how they affect your interactions. You can then adapt practical skills to fit the cultural context of the survivor and the health center.

Cultural competency also involves recognizing imbalances of power and issues of oppression and privilege, although these issues are not ones we will cover here.

Although we are using the term ‘cultural competency’, some organizations prefer the terms ‘cultural accountability’ or ‘cultural responsiveness’ instead, based the idea that a person can never be ‘competent’ in a culture that is not their own.