Diversity Practice: Cultural Safety and Cultural Competence

This article discusses the similarities and differences between cultural safety and cultural competence, and provides a real-life example of their combination in the drug and alcohol service profession. It explains that cultural competence refers to the skills, attitude, and knowledge needed to provide services to people from different cultural backgrounds, while cultural safety refers to the existence of a conducive environment that allows for the provision of services. The article argues that the combination of cultural safety and cultural competence can help reduce counseling inequalities in various ways.

Running head: DIVERSITY PRACTICE
Diversity practice
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DIVERSITY PRACTICE 2
Task 1
Similarities and difference between cultural safety and cultural competence.
Frances, (2010) argues that the difference between cultural safety and cultural
competence is that cultural competence means the skills, attitude and the knowledge that a
professional person in a certain field needs in order to achieve effectiveness in the specific field
he or she have specialized on. Cultural competence helps one to be able to provide services to
people from the different cultural background. On the other hand, cultural safety refers to the
existence of a conducive environment that can allow one to provide the services.
Consequently, the similarity between the two aspects is that they are both required in an
environment in order to provide the services as a profession and the service seeker to get the best
out of the skills the profession have according to Gayle King-Tamiha (2017). It can be seen that
cultural competence mainly focuses on the skills that one has in order to be able to give services
to the people from different cultural backgrounds. If one misses cultural competence, he or she
may not be able to accommodate the diversity of the cultures that may exist in the environment
he is working. On the other hand, cultural safety, focus beyond the knowledge and skills, it
shows what should be there to ensure that the cultural competency that the skilled person has
benefits the diverse cultural practices in the area.
Task 2
Real life example
In a real-life situation, an appropriate example is the counselor working in the drug and
alcohol service profession. Cultural safety a counselor come up with the best advice he or she
can give the people affected by drug addiction in reference to Steve Koptie (2009: pp.39). It

DIVERSITY PRACTICE 3
assists in creating awareness of the requirements of different cultural society in terms of giving
the counselling services. When one is aware of the needs of a certain community, he or she take
responsibility for any mistake that occurs while counselling people from the diverse cultural
background.
On the other hand, cultural competence assists a counselor to define what he or she can
with his or her skills given the cultural diversity where the drug counsellor is working. Apart
from that, there is an issue in the cultural diversity that is similar. Having cultural competence
assist the drug counselor to identify the homogenous issues between the cultures. However, most
of these issues are not related to the drug counselling sector and the counsellor needs to be aware
of every issue in the society. In a situation where a drug addict has been brought to the counselor,
using cultural safety all the victim should be allowed to openly express by use of his or her
culture. The environment should be positive and safe without discrimination of insult.
Combination of cultural safety and cultural competence assist in reducing counselling
inequalities in various ways. For instance, if one is able to understand what the two factors
needs, he or she is able to provide services in any location no matter the cultural diversity in that
place according to Wellington (2011). The counsellor is able to talk to patients keenly and
accommodate their behaviors which would have been influenced by their culture.

DIVERSITY PRACTICE 4
References
Frances I. Richardson (2010). Cultural Safety in Nursing Education and Practice in Aotearoa
New Zealand
Gayle King-Tamiha (2017). Hearing the Native in the Narrative
Steve Koptie (2009). The public Narrative on Cultural Safety pp.30-43
Wellington (2011) Nursing Council of New Zealand