Culturally Adapting Clinical Interventions: A 10-Step Process

January 13, 2022, 1-4:15 p.m. ET
Instructors: Susan Lee Tohn, M.S.W., LICSW and Ximena Soto, M.S.W., LICSW
Live interactive webinar
Level: Intermediate
CEs: 3 CEs are available for a $10 fee
Review CE accreditation and approvals for this course.
Social work has a long-standing commitment to providing culturally responsive services and supports. While one of the strengths of social work education is the commitment to evidence-based practice, too often the evidence-base pertaining to clinical interventions offers limited guidance about options for adapting accepted clinical practice so that it meets the needs of underrepresented populations. This may be one factor that contributes to the disparities in the engagement of culturally representative populations in mental health care.

Faculty members at the BC School of Social Work recognized the compelling need to re-imagine some aspects of clinical practice by putting cultural characteristics/ideology at the center of social work practice. BC School of Social Work developed a 10-step process called, “adapting clinical interventions for cultural alignment” and has implemented the first 8 steps of the process by making cultural adaptations in Solution Focused Therapy for members of Latinx communities. During this workshop, participants will watch an excerpt from one of the Solution Focused with Latinx community videos in order to understand one of the product outcomes of this project.

The intent of this ten-step process is to create a pathway for social workers to partner with community stakeholders and members of a specific population (in the sample case, it is the LatinX community, which is very diverse) to understand their culture, values and belief systems so that we can adapt a clinical intervention to be appropriate for that population. This interactional workshop will introduce this 10-step process and offer participants the opportunity to create their own action plans for adapting a clinical intervention for a particular population in their community. Presenters will explain a ten-step process for adapting clinical interventions to ensure that evidence-based clinical practice is culturally effective with underrepresented populations. Participants will work on creating their own action plans for their own adaptation of a clinical model with the population of their choosing. Ultimately, everyone will leave inspired with an idea of how to begin developing their own adaptation of a clinical intervention.