Best Practices in Culturally-Centered Counseling

This one-day event is designed to offer community and school-based mental health providers in Iowa the chance to participate in professional development designed to support their work. Intended for individuals who provide mental health services to clients who are culturally and linguistically diverse, this Summit will bring together experts to provide key best practices for working from a culturally-centered approach. Participants will also have a chance to connect with other mental health providers in the area.

Multicultural counseling work has received growing attention over the past two decades. The Multicultural Orientation (MCO) framework was developed to operationalize therapists’ cultural processes of cultural humility, cultural comfort, and cultural opportunity. Although the MCO framework has been empirically tested within an individual psychotherapy context, an experiential overview of the MCO framework will help drive deeper and more effective practices in engaging with multicultural clients. An overview of the MCO framework and then experiential opportunities to engage in clinical practice in a group supervision format will be provided. 

This workshop is free of charge. Eligible participants who attend and participate in the entire summit will receive a $330 stipend.

*Please note that only mental health providers who do not work for the University of Iowa are eligible for the stipend.

All participants will be able to receive 4 free CEs. To qualify for the 4 CE credits, the attendees must stay for the entire presentation.

Learning Goals:

At the end of this lecture, you will be able to:

1) Apply the Multicultural Orientation (MCO) Framework to individual counseling work. 

2) Review the empirical base of MCO.

3) Identify and practice strategies to create affirming and inclusive therapy sessions.

Suggested Reading:

1). Davis, D. E., DeBlaere, C., Owen, J., Hook, J. N., Rivera, D. P., Choe, E., … & Placeres, V. (2018). The multicultural orientation framework: A narrative review. Psychotherapy, 55(1), 89.

2) Owen, J., Tao, K. W., Leach, M. M., & Rodolfa, E. (2011). Clients’ perceptions of their psychotherapists’ multicultural orientation. Psychotherapy, 48(3), 274-282. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022065

3). Kivlighan III, D. M., Adams, M. C., Drinane, J. M., Tao, K. W., & Owen, J. (2019). Construction and validation of the Multicultural Orientation Inventory. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 66(1), 45.