Overview

Series: Cultural competency

This is the first acitivity in the series. It will focus on the “first interview” with the culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) adult clients, who are from migrant or refugee backgrounds. These individuals can experience language and cultural barriers, therefore, it is important to conduct the interview in an ethical and culturally sensitive manner.

It will cover:

• the required groundwork and preparation,

• review the approaches that can be adopted in the opening phase of the interview to develop rapport and increase the client’s engagement communication,

• consider the sensitive questions that can be used to understand the client’s history as well as the role client’s culture plays in the development, maintenance, and treatment of the problems, as part of the middle part of the interview which concentrates on the client’s presenting problems, and personal and family history, 

• cover the transit and post migration challenges and the acculturation process, taking into an account the client’s migration background, probing that may be required to understand the client’s pre-migration,  

• examine queries that can be used to understand the client’s risks and protective factors, and

• discuss strategies that can be used to socialise the client to their culturally valid explanatory models, as the last closing part of the interview focusses on integrating information and sharing the formulation and treatment planning with the client.

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The second activity in this series - Cultural competency: Assessing youth, culturally and linguistically

Level of Learning

Foundational. This activity is targeted to those new to the topic.

Duration of access

Access to this activity is for 12 months from the date of confirmed registration.

APS CPD-Approved

This activity has been assessed against the APS Standards for CPD activities and approved for its education quality. Learn more about the APS CPD Approval process.

CPD Frequently Asked Questions

Refer to the APS CPD Frequently Asked Questions for general and technical information when undertaking APS Professional development activities.

Activity details

• On-demand webinar recording

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this activity, participants should be able to:

• learn about the strategies that can be used to engage effectively with adult CALD clients in an interview setting, and

• collect salient information from adult CALD clients in a sensitive manner as a part of the interview process.

Presenter(s)

Dr Nigar Khawaja FAPS

About the presenter(s)

Nigar G Khawaja (PhD) is a Professor at the School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology. She is a Clinical Psychologist and has taught advanced psychological assessment courses as a part of the Master of Clinical psychology program. Further, as a part of her cross-cultural and transcultural research she has worked extensively with culturally and linguistically diverse populations from migrant and refugee backgrounds. As an academic and a researcher, she has spearheaded research, training programs, and resources to hone the cultural competency skills of psychologists. She has published approximately 100 papers in international peer reviewed journals and received funding from multiple government and non-government sources. As an APS Fellow, Nigar is keen to promote the skills of the APS members.