Cultural Competency with the Jerusalem Mental Health Center

November 23, 2020

Cultural Competency – the ability of systems and individuals to effectively and positively adapt themselves to relevant identities, cultures, ethnic groups, etc. – is an ongoing personal and organizational process. We were thrilled by the opportunity to continue working with the center, having held workshops on cultural competence in mental health, and training bilingual staff in interpreting techniques. Almost a decade ago, when we started working with them, one of the organization’s legendary administrative directors, Shneor Havkin, told us: “We know the basics of cultural competence, we get along. But that’s not enough.” He explained that culturally competent health care, especially mental health care, is so complex, need more advanced and nuanced training is needed to make sure that patients receive the best care possible.

What does this actually mean? The Jerusalem Mental Health Center, including its hospitals and outpatient clinics, are diverse organizations. Because of their location in Jerusalem – the employees as well as the patients – come from diverse groups as well as the patients. Employees must adopt culturally competent skills in order to treat patients in a way that takes into account their perceptions, preferences and limitations. Culturally adapted treatment is particularly challenging in the context of mental health, where it is not always clear whether a person’s particular behavior is the result of his personality, the society in which he lives, or the mental illness he is dealing with.

A culturally competent organization must also look inward – and examine how it manages the diversity among employees in the best way possible. Diversity is the ability to manage employees from diverse human backgrounds. Inclusion, another related term, refers to the individual’s feeling as part of a group, the employee’s ability to express himself while maintaining his uniqueness, without the organization’s even slightest demand to downplay his identity or assimilate it into the organization altogether (from the Israeli Forum for Employment Diversity website).

The interest and investment in issues of diversity and inclusion has increased greatly in recent years, and has also received backing and government support through sets of guidelines, standards and training. We recently completed a course on diversity management and cultural competence for employees from the human resources and welfare, and heads of nursing departments at the Jerusalem Mental Health Center. In the 4-session course, participants learned about the benefits of diversity, the challenges of managing diversity and inclusion, and areas where existing knowledge and resources can be utilized to improve diversity management. For example, we spoke about Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which are voluntary, employee-led groups that foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with organizational mission, values, goals, business practices, and objectives. Examples of ERG’s can be promoting the discussion of LGBT workers’ rights, marking holidays and celebrations for members of different cultures, organizing culturally competent training days and more. We also learned about how to correctly manage conflicts, tools for effective intercultural communication, and even some techniques to simplify complex information for employees with different levels of literacy.

Managing diversity is important to the organization, employees and the community, but it is a challenging matter that sometimes causes dilemmas. For example, employees shared with us dilemmas on how to properly manage situations such as evaluating employees’ work and efficiency, firing employees, or managing crises that included a cultural element. There is not always a right solution to the issue, but even the opportunity to look at such situations from an intercultural standpoint can give the manager a new perspective, and enables them to choose the most professional solution and still give the employee the feeling that their cultural needs have been seen and heard.

We are pleased to continue to accompany the Jerusalem Mental Health Center in the process, which will continue with projects initiated by the participants on the subject of diversity and inclusion. Such mini-activism in the organization is important to continued engagement of the employees.

Dr. Michal Schuster, who led the training at the Jerusalem Mental Health Center, described the workshop in this Facebook post (Hebrew)

https://www.facebook.com/michal.schuster.5/posts/10158636838107906?__cft__[0]=AZXQ9GzfP_jhHl5rfr3g75my2fKw8kxMqn5I4awx4HzxGDduOKF5T4kaE-fsVROpu_xTbzGNUkvH9bKMF52ixXg-IRkoZKY6Bbsur89uYuomEftnIk-L5_IWlO28kbJoACUZyFGnPQ5XmXFG-ZwdDtkU&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continued support of cultural competency in Jerusalem since its inception in 2008.

Cultural Competency with the Jerusalem Mental Health Center

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