PS521 Unit 9 Culturally Responsive Group Paper Example

More Than Translated Handouts: A PS521 Unit 9 Paper Adapting an Intensive Outpatient Group for Spanish-Speaking Farmworkers in Southeast Idaho

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS521: Group Counseling

Unit 9 Culturally Responsive Group Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the program, the group members and every detail of the plan are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Problem

For two years, Spanish-speaking clients referred to our program joined the English-language evening group with a telephone interpreter. Of the eleven who started in that time, three completed the twelve weeks. In exit calls, clients said they could follow the content but not the jokes, could not interrupt through the interpreter and felt that the group's stories, about ski trips gone wrong or arguments over college football, belonged to other people's lives. Many worked twelve-hour shifts in potato warehouses or on dairies and found a 6:00 start impossible during harvest.

The program director asked our team to plan a Spanish-language group. This paper describes the plan and the reasoning behind it.

What Cultural Adaptation Means

Chen et al. (2008) argue that group therapists can bring multicultural competence and evidence-based practice together by adapting evidence-based models to fit the cultural beliefs and behaviors of members. They describe adaptation in three areas: how services are delivered, the nature of the therapeutic relationship and the components of treatment itself. They also urge leaders to act as local clinical scientists, testing whether adaptations work for the group in front of them, and to ground adaptation in members' social context, including experiences of discrimination and economic pressure.

Translation alone touches only one part of one area. Our previous arrangement translated words but left the delivery, the relationship and the content unchanged.

Does a Matching Leader Matter?

Flicker et al. (2008) studied 86 Hispanic and Anglo adolescents receiving family therapy for substance use. Teenagers from Hispanic families cut back more when their therapist shared that background than when the therapist was Anglo; for Anglo teenagers, the therapist's background made no measurable difference. The study involved adolescents and family therapy, not adult groups, but it suggests that a leader who shares members' background may matter, especially for members of a minority group, and that leaders from the majority group need deliberate training.

Our program has one bilingual counselor, whose parents worked twenty potato harvests near Idaho Falls before buying a small farm of their own. She agreed to lead the new group, with me co-facilitating in my limited Spanish and learning from her.

The new group's first adaptation was not a handout or an exercise; it was a leader who already knew why a missed shift during harvest could mean losing the job.

Adapting Delivery

We moved the group to 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, after most warehouse and dairy shifts, and arranged for it to meet at a community center in Blackfoot, closer to where members live, as well as in Pocatello. We added a sliding fee and asked the hospital to accept the state's public coverage, which many members have. During the October harvest, the program will allow members to attend two of three nights without falling behind.

Adapting the Relationship

Chen and colleagues emphasize trust in the therapeutic relationship, which for many immigrant clients is shaped by fears about immigration status, police and government agencies. At the first session, the leader will explain clearly what the program does and does not share and with whom, and that nobody at the program will ever ask for papers. The federal confidentiality rule for substance use records protects members' information, and the leader will explain it in plain Spanish. Members will be invited to say how they want to be addressed and whether they want family involved.

Adapting Treatment Components

The core content stays the same: relapse prevention, coping skills, motivational work and peer support, all of which the federal treatment protocol supports for group work in substance use treatment (Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, 2005). What changes is how it is presented. Examples will draw on members' lives, such as pressure to drink at a quinceañera or after a soccer game on Sunday, sending money home and working for a supervisor who drinks with the crew. Family will be a central theme, since many members describe their recovery as something they owe their families. Members who are religious will be invited to bring that into the group, without the group requiring it. Materials will be in Spanish at a reading level that fits members with limited schooling, and much of the teaching will be spoken rather than written.

Recruiting Members

A new group needs members, and many Spanish-speaking residents in these counties have never heard of the program or assume it is only for English speakers. We will share information through the two parishes that hold Spanish-language Mass, the promotora who works out of the district health office in Blackfoot, the consulate's mobile office when it visits and the farmworker legal aid office. Referral cards will describe the group in plain Spanish and emphasize that it is confidential and does not ask about immigration status. We will also contact the eight clients who left the English group early over the past two years to invite them back.

Preparing the Co-Facilitator

As a co-facilitator who does not share members' background and speaks limited Spanish, I need preparation of my own. Following the advice that majority-group leaders need deliberate training, I will take a cultural humility training through the hospital, meet weekly with the lead counselor to debrief and learn from her, and limit my role in the first cohort to logistics, check-ins and observation until members know me.

Testing the Adaptation

Following Chen and colleagues' advice to act as local clinical scientists, we will track completion rates, attendance and urine test results for the Spanish-language group and compare them with the two-year record of three completions in eleven starts. After each four weeks, members will be asked in a short anonymous survey what is working and what should change.

Limits

The plan is built on one framework and one matching study, neither of which tested adult substance use groups for Spanish-speaking farmworkers. With one bilingual counselor, the group's survival depends on a single person, and the program needs to recruit and train more.

Conclusion

Cultural adaptation for this group means changing when and where the group meets, how trust is built and how the content is presented, as Chen and colleagues describe, while keeping the evidence-based core. Flicker and colleagues' matching findings support a bilingual leader who shares members' background, and the federal protocol supports the group content itself. Tracking completion against the old record will show whether the adaptation works.

References

Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. (2005). Substance abuse treatment: Group therapy (Treatment Improvement Protocol Series, No. 41; HHS Publication No. SMA 05-3991). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Chen, E. C., Kakkad, D., & Balzano, J. (2008). Multicultural competence and evidence-based practice in group therapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64(11), 1261-1278. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20533

Flicker, S. M., Waldron, H. B., Turner, C. W., Brody, J. L., & Hops, H. (2008). Ethnic matching and treatment outcome with Hispanic and Anglo substance-abusing adolescents in family therapy. Journal of Family Psychology, 22(3), 439-447. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.22.3.439