Interweaving Ethnicity and Gender in Consultation

Interweaving Ethnicity and Gender in Consultation: A Training Experience Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 Pilar Hernández Ben Bunyi Ryann Townson ABSTRACT. The training of family therapy consultants in mental health and educational settings requires both a model for the development of skills and an understanding of the tasks leading to cultural competence. This paper describes and discusses the lessons learned by a consultation team as it trained in consultation by assessing, designing, and implementing interventions for a non-profit organization working with refugee children. Attention to ethnicity and gender guided the consultation process because of their prominence in the consultee’s work with refugee children. The authors used the Cultural Context Model as a frame to interweave culture and context in the consultation process and expand its use. doi:10.1300/J085v18n01_05 [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.] KEYWORDS. Ethnicity, gender, consultation training Pilar Hernández is Assistant Professor in Marriage and Family Therapy Program at San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 91182-1179. Ben Bunyi and Ryann Townson are affiliated with the Marriage and Family Therapy Program, Department of Counseling and School Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, Vol. 18(1) 2007 Available online at http://jfp.haworthpress.com © 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1300/J085v18n01_05 57 Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 58 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY The practice of consulting has been around for various decades and has been defined in a variety of ways. Broadly speaking, Harrison (2004) defined it as an interpersonal process in which a consultant provides assistance to a consultee in order to respond to issues that concern a third party or client. Consultations with individuals, families, groups, and organizations seek to enhance the consultee’s work performance. From an ecological perspective, Kelly (1987) posits that people, settings and events all play a role in the consultation process, and interactions between people and their environment cannot be underestimated. In the mental health field consulting has been a common practice for several decades formally and informally (Caplan, 1970; Caplan, Caplan, & Erchul, 1994). In the field of family therapy, consultation with master family therapists has also been a common practice in hospitals, community mental health centers, and schools, as well as in private and public forums (Andolfi & Haber, 1994; Carpenter & Treacher, 1989; Coffman, 1990; Sluzki, 2000, 2004). The use of consultants became popular with the expanded use of reflecting teams in family therapy. Reflecting teams were not only used to work directly with families but to assist clinicians in their work with families (Anderson, 1987; Griffith & Frieden, 2000; Pare, 1999; Selekman & King, 2001). Epston and White (1995) contributed to expanding the meaning of consulting by illustrating how therapists can shift their position and consult with their clients to impact a family, other families, and communities. Therapists working from a collaborative framework developed applications for working with schools (Fine, 1990). In sum, there have been multiple ways in which the practice of consulting has been defined and applied depending on the context and approach used in family therapy. In this paper, the authors specifically focus on consultation processes involving a consultant (an outsider with expertise in a particular area), consultees (individuals asking for assistance), and their organizational context (the organization in the world of work). Specifically, the training of family therapy consultants in mental health and educational settings requires both a model for the development of skills and an understanding of the tasks leading to cultural competence. This paper describes and discusses the training lessons learned by a consultation team as it assessed, designed, and implemented interventions for a nonprofit organization working with refugee children. Attention to ethnicity and gender guided the consultation process due to their prominence in the consultee’s work with refugee children. The authors used the Cultural Context Model (Almeida, 2004) as a frame to interweave culture and context in the consultation process and expand its use. The authors Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 Hernández, Bunyi, and Townson 59 also embrace Meyer’s (2002) view of the consultant’s role as one in which consultants may advise and collaborate with community groups and organizations to assist in identifying and solving problems, gathering and interpreting data, generating, implementing, and evaluating interventions, and integrating diversity and context in the consultation process (Ingraham & Meyers, 2000). According to Greshan and Kendall (1987) research in consultation has mostly been descriptive and has lacked an inclusion of environmental variables. Their review indicates that the majority of the research has been conducted on behavioral consultation models and that these models have the most empirical support. School consultation appears to be the most frequent setting for practice and research (Dougherty, 2005). In his article, “A 30 year perspective on best practices for consultation training,” Myers (2002) posits that one of the areas for future research and consultation training is the development of knowledge and skills concerning multicultural issues in consultation. In the field of multicultural consultation, Ingraham (2003) advocates the use of qualitative studies to address the complexity of multidimensional cultural variables, the need for “thick” descriptions, and contextual and power differentials. An interesting innovation and application of consulting services in the mental health field was developed by Kirmayer, Groleau, Guzder, Jaswant, and Jarvis in Canada (2003). They implemented a clinical and cultural consultation service in the province of Montreal, Canada, to improve service delivery in mainstream settings for culturally diverse urban populations. They evaluated 100 cases with regard to clinical assessments and formulations, recommendations, and referring clinician’s satisfaction with the consultation. They concluded that the impact of cultural misunderstandings was prevalent throughout in the form of incomplete assessments, incorrect diagnoses, inadequate or inappropriate treatment, and failed treatment alliances. Their consultation model effectively supplemented existing clinical services. These authors stressed the need to expand awareness and training in clinical settings by (1) increasing awareness of cultural issues in mental health and clinical skills among primary care clinicians and social service workers, through inservice training; (2) strengthening training of mental health practitioners in concepts of culture and strategies for intercultural care; and (3) training practitioners to work with interpreters and cultural brokers. The authors pay particular attention to consultation practices in relation to diversity and advance the idea that multiple dimensions of “diversity” interface in the everyday practice of consultation. This paper 60 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY describes and discusses the lessons learned by a consultation team as it trained in consultation by assessing, designing, and implementing interventions for a non-profit organization working with refugee children. Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 APPLICATION OF CORE CLINICAL COMPETENCIES GUIDING CLINICAL SUPERVISION OF CONSULTATION PRACTICE Hernández (2003) illustrated the use of the Cultural Context Model (CCM) in supervision. This model offers parameters to make visible and work through the intertwined ways in which discourses about gender, class, age, ability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity play out in someone’s life (Almeida, 1998, 2004). This model is distinguished from other family therapy models primarily by its (1) focusing on the development of critical consciousness, accountability, and empowerment; (2) valuing historical information; (3) locating supervisees’ narratives within the crucible of societal power dynamics; and (4) developing collaborative, learning processes within communities. Although the CCM focuses on these areas collectively and systematically, in this training experience the focus was on the development of critical consciousness, accountability, and empowerment in consultation. Critical consciousness has been defined as the development of a critical awareness of personal dynamics within the context of social and political situations (Freire, 1982). It is illustrated by an experience of recognizing cultural/societal prescriptions of choices for what they are, and not unquestionably as if they were “the natural order of things” (Hernández, 2003; Hernández, Almeida, & Del-Vecchio, 2005). The process whereby supervisors, supervisees, clients, and communities develop critical consciousness is the first step toward empowerment and accountability. The CCM encourages open conversations about the social location of trainees, consultees, and supervisors with regard to class, age, gender, ethnicity, ability, and sexual orientation to foster processes of critical consciousness within these areas. In training, supervisors pay careful attention to the language they use and to the institutional barriers and stories elaborated upon in training to assist trainees to understand their role in their communities and the effects of power and oppression in their lives and the lives of others. Thus, one training goal is to develop the ability to recognize and value different forms of expertise in the trainees, consultants, and clients (Collins, 2000). Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 Hernández, Bunyi, and Townson 61 Elsewhere Hernández (2003) and Hernández, Almeida, and DelVecchio (2005) described the notion of accountability. Based on Almeida’s work (1998), they defined it as a patterned way of relating to others that expands rigid societal norms (e.g., of masculine and feminine behavior). This concept questions the multiple institutions that maintain and perpetuate racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, and the ways in which these forms of oppression are manifested in family life. Unique characteristics of the CCM involve addressing developing critical consciousness for those in privileged positions, and dealing with the therapist’s responsibility to acknowledge and question her/his social location and act on behalf of those from which she/he benefits as a mental health provider. In a similar vein, Meyer’s (2004) application of Collin’s Black feminist epistemology into consultation points at the need to address the question, “who are you to tell me what to do in my classroom (or how to interact with my child)?” (p. 64). Assisting trainees to clarify their values, beliefs, privileges, and use of self contributes to developing accountability. The CCM addresses the process of empowerment at two levels. One of the empowering dimensions of the CCM stems from a mutual co-creation of meaning in which the therapists are key in the re-construction of the clients’ life stories as it is understood in narrative approaches (Laird, 1989; Weingarten, 1995). In consultation training, this mutual co-creation implies that both supervisor and trainees acknowledge his/her location in the social world and its implications and elaborate their views and interventions with this acknowledgement. The second level of empowerment simultaneously includes individual, family, community conversations, and the linking of these conversations with social action. In consultation training, empowering develops as trainees gain voice in the supervision, consultation, and organizational contexts. The development of a voice in a political context was illustrated by the African American trainee who participated in this experience as illustrated later in this paper. THE CONSULTATION PROCESS The Consultation Participants The consulting team invited to evaluate the non-profit organization consisted of a Colombian marriage and family therapy assistant professor with extensive clinical experience in the United States and overseas, Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 62 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY and two third-year marriage and family therapy Master’s trainees: a Filipino male with an undergraduate background in ethnic studies and an African American female with an undergraduate background in psychology. Both had experience working with social agencies. The consultation team members had various degrees of experience working with diverse ethnic populations and their work emphasized cultural diversity. The consultee was a non-profit organization working with refugee children. Two of the three male members who administrated the organization and taught the children photography requested the consultation. Two were of European descent and one was Asian. Eventually, a female of European descent joined the organization. They had bachelor’s degrees in fields not related to human services but had experience in teaching children abroad. The non-profit organization promotes self-sufficiency by teaching refugee children print photography and digital media in a classroom setting. The classes were taught by the staff and community volunteers. The clients this non-profit served were preadolescent and adolescent refugee children primarily from African countries. Both consultants and consultees were all heterosexual. Encounters The program evaluation consisted of two planning meetings with the non-profit staff, one-hour interviews with the staff, thirty-minute interviews with three refugee children, observation of staff meetings, weekly participatory observations of two of the photography classes for 32 weeks and 3 workshops. Context and Social Location Authors invested in integrating culture and context in consultation explain that cultural competence is fundamental given the growing diversity of United States and Canada (Washburn, Manley, & Holiwski, 2003; Kavanaugh, Absalom, Beil, & Schliessmann, 1999). In the mental health field, cultural competence cannot continue to be considered a simple addition to a set of skills. Kavanaugh et al. (1999) and Kirmayer (2003) offer examples of how to conduct culturally competent consultations in the schools, in Native American reservations, and how the governmental health system may increase the efficiency of the systems they serve. This consultation team had a commitment to integrating culture and context into the consultation process and this was one of the reasons Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 Hernández, Bunyi, and Townson 63 why the consultees requested their help. The consultees wanted to learn how to relate to the children in a more competent manner and overcome the interpersonal difficulties they faced with them. A key training component involved understanding the larger social context in the city where the non-profit operated and the social locations of the participants involved. The consulting team viewed this consultation process as an engagement by which it would operate as a system with which a group of people interact as a functional unit (Bateson, 1972). This functional unit included the ways in which ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation organized how the consulting team members related to each other. The consulting team also kept in mind that this would become a relationship in which they would impact each other. That is, as consultants they were mindful of the impact that the consultees and the children would have on the consultants and vice versa. Broadly speaking, the city where the consultation occurred is one that attracts refugees from all over world. In spite of this, it has few community-based services for refugees. It is a border city with several military bases and people from Mexican descent are the largest ethnic group in the area. It has been characterized as politically and socially conservative. Its high cost of living makes it very challenging for refugees and low-income citizens to survive. A major issue is that this is a major metropolitan area holding to the idea that it is a small suburban area. This has tremendous negative implications for public transportation, social services, housing, affordability, and jobs. Thus, the refugee children and their families were located in an area where it is difficult to survive financially. What follows is a description and analysis of the consultation training process. It has been divided into the following sections: micro-skill training, development of critical consciousness, accountability, and empowerment. The Training Process: Skill Development Training involved the use of basic interpersonal and micro-counseling skills as well as the development of problem-solving skills, systemic hypotheses, and interventions requiring an advanced skill level. The Master’s family therapy trainees in the consulting team had already been trained in the following basic interpersonal skills: joining with the consulting team or consultees, creating an environment conducive to collaboration, explaining their role and responding to verbal and non-verbal communication. The development of social influence and Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 64 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY trustworthiness was initiated by the lead consultant. In initial conversations with the consultees, her work with traumatic stress in the United States and overseas was discussed as well as her consultation experience overseas. Thus, when the trainees were introduced to the consultees, the stage was set to discuss the trainees’ level of skill and experience. Table 1 illustrates the evolution of the process and the skills involved in each phase. In addition, trainees had already achieved a good level of competency in micro-counseling skills (Ivey, 1991) such as non-verbal attending, listening, expressing empathy, paraphrasing, summarizing, questioning and probing, and providing direct feedback. Research on the role that these skills play in the consultation process indicates that they build the foundation for the whole process (Daniels & DeWine, 1990; Dougherty, Henderson, Tack, Deck, Worley, & Page, 1997). For example, the trainee Ben Bunyi (B.B.) responsible for the initial joining and observation process observed one of the classes every week and met with the consulting organization staff after the class. He heard their comments and participated in the meeting at the very end by paraphrasing the staff’s comments, summarizing their views, offering questions and feedback on ways to relate to the children. Advanced skills involved understanding and learning how to conduct a program evaluation, how to become a participant observer, and problem solving (see Table 1). The qualitative program evaluation was framed within the Responsive Evaluation modality developed by Lincoln and Guba (1985). Within this model, the goals were as follows: (1) To identify issues and concerns based on direct, face-to-face contact with people in the program; (2) to conduct direct personal observations of the work; and (3) to develop themes that speak about the program’s vision, activities, and goals. Based on naturalistic and participatory observations, the consulting team offered an evaluation of the non-profit program’s didactic component with refugee children, the program’s capacity to include a mental health component, a description of the various visions that overlapped in the consultees’ agenda and the workings of a male-oriented organization working primarily with boys. This program evaluation involved learning to gather, analyze, interpret, and present data. Furthermore, it constituted the basis for identifying problem areas and for offering suggestions on how to approach them. The consulting team identified the following areas of strength: strong group cohesion, strong group commitment to the work with refugee children, resourcefulness, use of creative and marketable skills in multimedia, and uniqueness of the program. Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 TABLE 1. Phases and Skill Level in the Consultation Process Request for Consultation Observations and Interviews Participant Observation Feedback and Problem Solving Termination Development of trustworthiness Filed observations and immersion in the organization’s work with refugee children Structured interviews Classroom observation Teacher-student interactions Review of the project Development of a contract Development of critical consciousness Development of critical consciousness Development of empowerment positions and accountability Skill level* Basic interpersonal and Micro-counseling skills: joining, creating an environment conducive to collaboration, explaining role and responding to verbal and non-verbal communication; non-verbal attending, listening, expressing empathy, paraphrasing, summarizing, questioning and probing and providing direct feedback Skill level Observation Listening Field notes Open-ended questions and probing Skill level Design activities for the children Offer feedback to the instructors Conflict resolution Skill level Teaching the staff foundational concepts in traumatic stress and resilience Teaching the staff basic interpersonal and micro-counseling skills Teaching conflict management * Each skill level is the basis for the next and it is integrated as the trainee advances in the learning process. Evaluation of goals, accomplishments, and problem areas. 65 Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 66 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY Areas for further development included lack of inclusion of girls and women instructors/administrators in the program, interpersonal conflict with the children, a need to understand traumatic stress dynamics in refugee children, a need to understand how privilege and ethnicity played a role in interactions with the children, and differences and commonalities in the vision of the leadership for the organization as a whole. Becoming a participant observer involved gaining skills to create a working relationship with members of the organization, using organizational analysis, assessing the climate and culture of the organization, assessing classroom dynamics, and facilitating group processes. Learning problem-solving skills involved identifying problem areas and designing and implementing interventions in collaboration with the consultees. One of the problem areas identified was the instructors’ teaching style and its impact on the children. Prolonged classroom observations of interactions between instructors and children made evident that the instructors’ teaching styles and their ways of handling conflict with the children generated dissatisfaction in both instructors and children. The observers recorded two particular teaching styles that were problematic: one that emphasized authority and obedience and one that emphasized productivity, timely performance, and the completion of tasks. The consultees’ educational background did not include training in education and experience observing themselves as instructors. In order to develop awareness about the impact of the instructors’ styles and how their educational upbringing was translated into their work with the refugee children, a reflecting team intervention was proposed and implemented (Anderson, 1987). In addition, this intervention sought to open up a dialogue amongst the instructors in which they could listen to and support each other in their efforts to improve their performance. The consultants discussed with the consultees the problem area identified and explained the logistics of the reflecting team intervention. After the consultees agreed to this intervention, the consulting team modeled a reflecting conversation while the consultees observed in silence behind a one-way mirror. Then, the consultees were invited to have their own conversation about their educational experiences and background. These conversations made evident how the instructors enacted the legacy of the role models and values they had growing up. A high demand for academic excellence in a product-driven manner, an emphasis on competition and hierarchy, and a lack of regard for process and emotions were salient in their stories. The reflecting team offered a space for the consultees to listen to each other in an emphatic manner and for a dialogue about suggestions for change. Hernández, Bunyi, and Townson 67 Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 The Training Process: Development of Critical Consciousness Each of the consultant trainees developed critical consciousness indifferent areas in this process. For B.B., a Filipino male trainee, a challenge emerged when facing familial and cultural values regarding humility and the value that mainstream American culture places on self-image and expertise. Looking back at his own experience as a consultant in training, he found himself as an uncertain novice at the beginning of the consultation project (Meyers, 2002). In spite of his training and experience with social services, he found himself unsure of his skills and his personal and professional identity when providing consultation services. In his field notes he recalled having an ever-present awareness of the fact that he was a student dealing with agency administrators and that he was a part of an ethnic-minority group providing consultation services to men of European descent in a position of power. The consultation literature hypothesizes that learning, developing, and applying consultation skills addresses the uncertainty that is pervasive in being a beginning consultant in training (Meyers, 2002). However, Ben Bunyi felt that learning these skills was only a small part of gaining confidence and becoming an expert. For him the key to his own process of moving from an uncertain beginning consultant in training towards becoming a non-threatening expert involved examining his social location, its intersection with the consultees’ social location and the impact of this interaction in the consultation process. This examination occurred in the context of supervision and team meetings. He discovered that one of the barriers preventing him from moving towards a non-threatening-expert stance was a familial cultural message regarding humility. He was raised in the Philippines for twelve years and, after migrating to the United States, his paternal Filipino grandparents raised him. Both grandparents migrated to the United States as adults. In his family and cultural background, humility is considered a virtue and any bold proclamation of expertise is generally frowned upon. In addition, he grew up with a dominant cultural message about how a person conducts himself or herself as a guest in someone else’s house. Humility is very important when conducting oneself in someone’s home, it is accompanied by deference to the homeowners and respect for their space and their property. In his experience of immigration, this dominant cultural message regarding how one conducts oneself as a guest became the dominant story in how Filipinos, specifically his family of origin, conducted themselves as immigrants in the United States. He Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 68 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY remembered that he could almost hear a tape of his grandmother’s voice emphasizing humility, deference to Americans of European descent, and respect for their space. This cultural norm was exacerbated by an underlying message embedded in American society in which immigrants and their children–even if those children were born in the United States–are outsiders. Thus, trying to become a non-threatening expert in this context placed him in a conundrum. He embarked on a quest to challenge his family’s values leading to internalized oppression. He re-discovered the meaning of the Manghihilot or Filipino healer. The Manghihilot were revered in communities and often came to people’s homes to provide both physical and emotional healing. Since he had been healed by several of them before, he remembered how they were able to balance exerting the power given to them in reverence of their experience and respecting the rights and wishes of those they healed. He drew a parallel between being a consultant and a Manghihilot, both are asked to utilize knowledge, skills, and experience to “fix” problems and are asked to do so in the domain of other people’s spaces. The Training Process: Development of Accountability A second consultant in training, Ryann Townson (R.T.) was invited to join the project because of her good therapeutic skills, experience as an African American female working with African and African Americans, and knowledge of historical trauma. Her initial experience was as follows: I experienced several red flags with the AjA Staff that indicated their discomfort with me as a consultant in training. As a participant observer in this project, I had to observe the consultees’ interactions among themselves, with program participants, and with myself as a consultee. I participated in staff meetings, classroom settings, and workshops. My immediate goal was to assess the climate and culture of the organization and to create an observational analysis encapsulated within the existing sociopolitical context of the organization. However, I found myself hardly acknowledged by the staff which included the following patterned behaviors: the male staff forgetting my name, failing to ask me questions directly, not being informed when meeting times and events were changed and/or canceled, and ignoring my suggestions altogether. It was in these interpersonal interactions I found myself shutting down and feeling frustrated. Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 Hernández, Bunyi, and Townson 69 This consultant in training’s anxiety created a sense of paralysis, self-doubt, and criticism in her. In her view, she experienced a dissonance between having had successful experiences as a clinician and feeling positive about her identity and feeling insecure about her clinical skills and doubting whether her racial identity was an issue in this project. She found a way to make sense of her experience in several ways. She referred to authors who have discussed these issues to understand them, brought up her concerns to the consulting team, continued her work with the project, and decided to articulate her experience to share it with larger audiences. She struggled to uncover ways to bring voice to the intersection of race and gender experiences. Many times she wondered if the behaviors and interactions that she experienced were accurate, if issues of social location overtly and covertly played a role in the consultees’ attitudes toward her. She pondered how ethnicity, gender, and class constructs can be used as areas of change for consultees and consultants. Throughout this time a process that helped B.B. move from novice to expert involved holding himself accountable for his work beyond the responsibilities expected from a student. For him accountability meant undertaking the uncomfortable process of examining power differentials in the consultation system, recognizing and accepting his privilege in this system, and taking responsibility for addressing any negative impact that this privilege may have had. For example, after reflecting on his overall experience with the consultation process as well as the changes that occurred when R.T. joined the project, he realized that in this situation, his ethnicity and gender gave him a certain privilege over his consultant-in-training partner (R.T.). In this particular context, it was easy to relate to other males and their response of acceptance toward him was obvious. In addition, there was another Asian immigrant in the team and recent histories of migration were valuable in the culture of this organization. These dynamics may reflect larger mainstream American societal norms where male privilege is pervasive and Asians, Filipinos included, tend to be falsely construed as the model minority and often contrasted against other communities of color, specifically the African American community. The impact of his privilege on the consulting team was as follows: While both consultants in training were observing different classrooms, the consultees would often approach him with questions regarding situations which R.T. directly observed, they would strike up casual conversation with him but not with her, and they would not be as open to her feedback. He also observed that the consultees had different Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 70 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY reactions to the same feedback depending upon whether the feedback was provided by him or R.T. Recognizing, accepting this dynamic, and ensuring a change in the consultant’s system evolved in supervision. The next phase involved his becoming an active participant in deconstructing the privilege provided by his ethnicity and gender by referring consultees to R.T. when their questions dealt with issues that she had directly observed or had been involved in, emphasizing R.T.’s expertise and deferring to it when appropriate. In addition, this process impacted his comfort with being “the” leader. For him, this was a particular male assumption about having to be in control and in the spotlight. He acknowledged that it was difficult for him to step back and not to try to lead activities, dominate conversations, and share the decision-making process. Nevertheless, he relinquished control to support R.T. and to contribute to changing the balance in the consulting team. The Training Process: Development of Empowerment Conceptualizing effective mentorship and training in multicultural consultation requires that training and practice be guided by two fundamental premises: (1) The consideration that the concepts and conceptual frameworks that one uses are embedded in messages about who and what is important (Patton, 1990), and (2) human development evolves within the context of our social roles, which are organized and bounded within the class, gender, ethnic, and cultural structure of our society (Almeida, 2002). It is critical that mentorship and training analyze and investigate how these roles permeate the totality of human experience. For R.T., articulating her critical consciousness about ethnic and gender issues with accountability and empowerment required four processes: (1) Validating her identity and her experience, (2) examining familial experiences in larger society, (3) connecting with diverse societal narratives, and (4) strategizing responses to race, gender, and power dynamics in the project. First, she compared and contrasted her experience with the consulteees with her experience in larger society. The political context of her experience with the consultees was not different from her experience within the larger society (i.e., which is to be ignored, silenced, perceived less than, and dismissed altogether). She had to remind herself that her experience was not unique and that what she experienced was not just about her skills but racism. In addition, she established conversations with the consulting team to receive validation and support. Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 Hernández, Bunyi, and Townson 71 Second, utilizing social location issues as a guide for assessment and intervention required that trainees recognize and take into account the consultees’ social location. This involves gaining an understanding of where the consultees and their clientele come from and considering multiple dimensions of their personhood. An example, R.T. observed that when one of the consultees brought a new laptop to the classroom, the students showed curiosity. They wanted to touch it and use it. One of the students asked the consultee what was its cost. The consultee was rendered speechless for a moment. He then said that it was very expensive and changed the topic. The student said that he wanted to save and buy one but the consultee did not continue the conversation. In R.T.’s eyes, there were better options to handle this interaction with the student. However, she hypothesized that the consultee’s cutting off of the student had to do with his lack of comfort with talking openly about money with someone for whom this kind of laptop is out of reach. Strategizing conversations, interventions, and working together to respond to race, gender, and power dynamics was a critical aspect of mentorship that required a positioning and a presentation of ideas that challenged the consultants’ privilege in a collaborative manner. The consultants devised several strategies to deal with these issues. One method of strategizing was to value R.T.’s personal, professional, and educational status by putting her at the center in consultation meetings. The other two members deferred to her in the implementation of strategies designed by the team. A Reflecting Team was implemented as a training technique to facilitate new information and multiple understandings of R.T.’s experiences with the consultees and its impact in their work with refugee children. In a part of a consultation session, a reflecting team was structured to allow conversations around the impact of ethnicity and gender in the consultees’ work. R.T. had a chance to discuss with one of the consultees the impact of ethnicity on the refugee children while the rest of the consultees and consultants observed. R.T. brought up themes related to growing up in America in marginalized context due to ethnic and class locations, shared her own experience in school settings and compared it with the struggles that the refugee children suffered. She pointed at the meaning of differences as she and the consultant from the non-governmental organization openly talked about how different were their school-related experiences. Finally, moving from to a position of empowerment involved R.T.’s developing of her own voice in this political context. In her experience, mentorship and training in consultation must examine and challenge 72 JOURNAL OF FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPY issues of power, privilege, and injustice as it shapes interpersonal interactions and relationships. Open dialogue in supervision enabled her to feel heard and respected. She recalled: Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 It was within the context of the mentor and trainee relationship in which I first learned to develop my voice because skill development incorporated an environment, which privileged issues of race, gender, and class. Developing my voice in a political context meant gaining the opportunity to challenge these issues in a direct but respectful manner. Gaining empowerment implies that one feels a sense of power. In training, I was encouraged to struggle with complex issues, multifaceted with race, gender, and class constructs. I received encouragement from the SDSU consulting team and found myself strengthened as I gained increasing awareness of how my own cultural and familial experiences have shaped who I am as a clinician. Furthermore, when the consulting team expanded their conversations with professional audiences, her development continued. She found that these presentations made sense as a way to engage in dialogue and expand the number of witnesses in the process. She recalled: Discussing my experience with larger audiences in professional presentations, I wanted to find one small way to encourage trainees newly entering the field who might be discouraged by some of their experiences in educational settings. I also aspired to reach the professors specializing and teaching consultation as well as other mental health professionals. The witnessing of other professionals dedicated to cultural issues, I believe that empowerment rests within me and that what I have to share is my journey. Changes Incorporated by the Consultees One way to describe some of the changes implemented by the consulting organization is by using the systemic concepts of first- and second-order change (Bateson, 1972). First-order change refers to changes that left unaltered the fundamental underlying organization of the consultees. An example of this kind of change was reflected in their request for specific didactic training on traumatic stress dynamics in children and beginning an understanding of the impact of trauma on the children’s Hernández, Bunyi, and Townson 73 Downloaded By: [Utah State University] At: 16:03 10 April 2010 cognitive and emotional functioning. Second-order change refers to changes that altered the fundamental organization of the organization. The incorporation of a woman as part of the training and administration staff and the active recruitment of girls into the program changed the direction of the organization by incorporating awareness of gender issues. Furthermore, they developed a youth council and invited young women of color to be members. Unfortunately, they were willing to make changes around gender issues but were unwilling to look at ethnicity and ethnic privilege. Finally, the consulting team was later hired to conduct workshops on developing interpersonal skills. CONCLUSION This case study illustrated key diversity aspects in the consultantsin-training mentoring process. By addressing two dimensions of diversity (gender and ethnicity) as intersecting in the consultant team and as interacting between consultants and consultees, issues of privilege and marginalization were dealt within the particular consultation’s power dynamics. 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