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Cultural Considerations in Refining Intervention Designs

  • Chapter
Advances in Child Abuse Prevention Knowledge

Part of the book series: Child Maltreatment ((MALT,volume 5))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on culture as a frame for understanding diverse families’ experiences with the U.S. child welfare system. Rooted in an interdisciplinary perspective, the chapter uses a particular lens in defining culture and discusses the roles of culture in parenting, child welfare practice, and policy at multiple levels in giving context to past and current disproportional involvement with child welfare systems for certain subgroups and populations. Authors recommend strategies for improving the child maltreatment prevention field’s capacity to promote child well-being in culturally diverse families and communities. Strategies discussed include: (1) improving the definition and measurement of culture and cultural competence in research; (2) strengthening research to identify risks for and protective factors against maltreatment in different cultural groups; (3) increasing cultural diversity in the workforce; and (4) developing and advancing interventions that are culturally responsive.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Megan Finno-Velasquez

  2. Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

    Elizabeth A. Shuey & Chie Kotake

  3. College of Social Work, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    J. Jay Miller PhD, MSW, CSW

Authors
  1. Megan Finno-Velasquez
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  2. Elizabeth A. Shuey
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  3. Chie Kotake
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  4. J. Jay Miller PhD, MSW, CSW
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Correspondence to Megan Finno-Velasquez .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Chapin Hall, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Deborah Daro

  2. Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

    Anne Cohn Donnelly

  3. Chapin Hall, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Lee Ann Huang

  4. Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Byron J. Powell

Reflection: Listen to All Voices

Reflection: Listen to All Voices

  • Ellen E. Pinderhughes 

  1. Tufts University,, Medford, , MA, , USA

    Ellen E. Pinderhughes

Whether as practitioner or researcher, I have participated in the field of child maltreatment for over 40 years. Reflecting on the changes during this period, I am struck by the importance of voices—those that are and are not privileged.

Terminology

In the 60s and 70s, terms pervaded the literature reflecting white middle class families as the standard bearer. (I remember being asked why I was bothering to learn about the demographics and cultural backgrounds of families as I prepared to evaluate an agency’s services.) The prevailing approaches were founded on a deficit approach to families who were not white, middle class, and headed by two straight parents. In 2014, we hear terms suggesting the importance of empowerment, practitioners as allies, and understanding families’ culture and position in the social system.

Disciplinary Relationships

Four to five decades ago, the fields charged with addressing child abuse were disconnected and focused on their own power and privilege stratification. Today, interventions and evaluations benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations of scientists/practitioners, quantitative/qualitative experts, embracing social work, psychology, health sciences, education, sociology, anthropology, policy, and other fields. Most recently, community-based collaborations have emerged, shaped in part by voices in the community supporting this approach.

Context

Forty years ago, our considerations of contextual influences were unidirectional and in their infancy. We now consider multiple and intersecting layers of context that directly (family, neighborhood, school) and indirectly (workplace, extended families/support networks, and policies) transact with parenting and are relevant to addressing child maltreatment. Perhaps most importantly of all, we now work to incorporate an understanding of culture and culturally related processes into our understanding of child abuse prevention and intervention and its effectiveness.

Who’s the Expert?

A critical change occurred in the framing of professionals or researchers and clients or research participants. Fifty years ago, guided by values privileging “objectivity” in science and in service delivery, the field viewed professionals and researchers as the expert. The field did not value the perspectives of those we sought to help. The field also did not value the perspectives of professionals of color that differed from mainstream views. Over time, the voices of professionals of color grew in decibel, number, persistence, and insistence, calling for attention to culturally based processes in research, theoretically based reasons for studying differences in parenting and child functioning between cultural groups, and strength-based approaches to studying diverse families. These approaches would require listening to families. Gradually, the voices of mainstream and dominant group allies joined this effort. Voices from multiple fields also have converged to highlight the importance of cultural sensitivity and humility and distinguishing social stratification processes from cultural processes and their effects in defining the target problem, developing interventions and designing evaluations.

Self-inquiry

We also learned the importance of understanding the voices (explicit and implicit) we each carry with us as we engage with others (whether colleague, peer, client or participant) who are culturally different. Each of us has values, attitudes, and beliefs that have been shaped by our experiences and our cultural characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, SES, sexual/romantic orientation, nationality, religion, etc.). Those experiences shape how we view and interact with others. Understanding our own voices has become increasingly critical to understanding the voices of others. As we become aware of our own voices and our underlying beliefs and values, we become better able to listen and better hear others’ voices.

The Tools We Use

As a result of these changes, we have a greater appreciation of the complex influences on child abuse, the varied outcomes, and the complexities associated with addressing child abuse effectively. Modeling these complexities has been facilitated by tremendous change in methodological and analytical approaches, along with increased access to large datasets relevant for studying child maltreatment. In combination, these latter advances have enabled more sophisticated and cost-effective studies than was possible when researchers only gathered original data. In keeping with the voices calling for cultural sensitivity, we must interrogate these datasets and the methods and analyses used for the voices within and the voices that shaped them.

In sum, listening to diverse voices has facilitated a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding about child maltreatment, as well as more informed decisions about the design or adaptation of interventions for specific populations and examinations of their effectiveness. As the field of child maltreatment looks ahead to the next fifty years, and we develop even more sophisticated approaches to better understand and address these complexities, let us be sure that the voices of those who can most benefit are at the table.

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Finno-Velasquez, M., Shuey, E.A., Kotake, C., Miller, J.J. (2015). Cultural Considerations in Refining Intervention Designs. In: Daro, D., Cohn Donnelly, A., Huang, L., Powell, B. (eds) Advances in Child Abuse Prevention Knowledge. Child Maltreatment, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16327-7_5

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