Organizational cultural competency: shifting programs for Latino immigrants from a client-centered to a community-based orientation.
This paper discusses how the organizational cultural competency of social service agencies may be improved by shifting the philosophy of service delivery from a client-centered to a community-based orientation. This analysis is based on two years of fieldwork and interviews that were conducted as part of an action research project initially developed to increase the number of certified Spanish speaking Latino family childcare providers and knowledge about Latino immigrant families in the Midwest. In developing a culturally-specific certification program in Spanish, both the Latino participants and the bilingual program director challenged the agency to consider how the social context and social location of its participants required a more holistic community approach.
Uttal
Lynet
L
Human Development and Family Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1430 Linden Drive, #202, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Luttal@wisc.edu
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D002648:Child; D002654:Child Care; D003071:Cognition; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D015279:Organizational Culture; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education; D016730:Program Development; D012938:Social Perception; D012947:Social Work / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014481:United States