The assessment of black foster parents: The relevance of cultural skills - comparative views of social workers and applicants

Abstract

Social workers ' delineation of the problem of the recruitment of black foster parents in terms of cultural differences resulted in their professionalism being challenged on several counts. Social workers, themselves, were divided over the relevance of cultural skills to the assessment process and over the need to employ black workers. Although they paid lip service to the idea of cultural pluralism, their commitment was superficial (Roys, 1988; Ely and Denney, 1978). Culture and ethnicity were treated as the predominant; if not the only, dimensions relevant to the client-worker encounter but, for applicants, culture was only one of a set of intricately related and interactive dimensions which structure the realtionship between practitioner and client. A cultural pluralist approach which failed to address questions of representation and power sharing not only undermined confidence in white social workers' cross-cultural competence but weakened black social workers opportun ities for long-term incorportion into mainstream work. Applicants own mistrust of a cultural diagnosis of their situation helped to shift the frame of reference to a more general reappraisal of family assessment skills where personality and common sense were set against professional train ing. It was in this area that social workers faced the more serious chal lenge to their authority as professionals.