Introduction to Race, Culture & Anti-Discrimination

Introduction to Race, Culture, & Anti-Discrimination (RCA 2.0) in Therapeutic Practice

Join Race, Culture, and Anti-Discrimination (RCA) expert(s) with lived experience, as they help you to embark on a process of embedding race, culture, heritage, and an antidiscrimination ethos into your psychological practice for all clients.

This training will equip you with the foundational knowledge, skills, and strategies you need to assess and conceptualise client problems and build cross racial-cultural relationships using an RCA lens. As client outcomes have been shown to be mediated by therapists’ own racial-cultural self-awareness, this training will, through experiential exercises, help you reflect upon your own cultural context(s), racial-cultural identity, intersecting sociocultural position, and worldview.

Background

In psychological training, the therapist can often be left without the necessary knowledge and skills to build cross racial-cultural relationships, understand clients’ cultural contexts, or explore clients’ group identities and experiences of racial-cultural discrimination. The link between social-cultural conflicts and clients’ presenting problem may never be made, even for those of a European heritage. This can leave an important factor out of therapy and consequently lead to a shortfall in the service provided or, worse – and particularly for People of the Global Majority* (PoGM) [Ref 1,2,3] – lead to negative experiences. Thus, it is essential for us to create a therapeutic service that is safer, more inclusive, more complete, and more skillful for all clients.

Overview

The training is structured into four units with case examples, experiential exercises, and expert strategies provided throughout. There will be opportunities to reflect, ask questions, bring your own experiences, and consider a client roleplay.

1: RCA Concepts 

  • Understanding RCA concepts and theories
  • How RCA is universal to all clients and thus an essential part of therapeutic practice
  • Exploring your racial-cultural identity and power (experiential)
  • Undertanding forms of racial-cultural identity and discrimination: A-Z
  • Understanding the scope and importance of anti-discrimination in practice
  • Self-location within anti-discrimination practice: social allyship (exercise)

2: Exploring Cultural Contexts and Group Identities (Experiential/Interactive discussion process)

  • Exploration of cultural context, heritage, and lived-in cultural experiences
  • How you formed your personal worldview
  • How you see your racial-cultural identity
  • How society sees your racial-cultural identity
  • Implications for practice

3: Assessment and Relationship Development (Case Study, Roleplay, and Reflection)

  • Strategies for buillding the RCA relationship
  • Racial-cultural and intersectional assessment
  • Racial-cultural broaching, including racism and racial-cultural and intersecting discrimination
  • Formulating potential areas of exploration (strengths and psychological stressors)
  • Common therapist pitfalls, including racial-cultural othering and microaggressions
  • Reflections on a roleplay

4: Embedding RCA in practice

  • Principles of integration, learning, and self-development
  • What is an Antidiscrimination organisation and practice?
  • Group reflections on client experiences
  • Situating your next level of development
  • #TADF: Race & Culture 2.0 Competency Framework & Call to Action
  • Questions and answers

Audience

Any psychological practitioner, such as counsellors, psychotherapists, and psychologists. It is also suitable for trainees. We will provide guidance on readiness to work with clients during the training so you can self-assess your development.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will:

  • Understand and be able to explain various aspects of RCA, such as its scope, universal relevence to therapeutic work, and associated psychological theories.
  • Develop a deeper awareness of your own and others’ racial-cultural and intersecting identity, worldview, and their meaning and relevence to the relationship and anti-discrimination practice.
  • Learn to develop narratives around your own and clients’ cultural context(s), psychological conflicts, and migration and acculturation challenges in preparation for therapeutic work.
  • Be better equipped to assess and conceptualise aspects of race and culture as part of a client’s overall problem presentation.
  • Develop strategies to build the relationship, broach racism and intersecting social identities, and build racial-cultural identity narratives.
  • Learn common mistakes therapists make in working with race and culture which form (often invisible) barriers to the relationship and impact outcomes.
  • Situate your learning and edge of development in working within a racially-culturally informed manner.

Standards of competence

This training aligns with our leading Race and Culture 2.0 standards based framework particuarly racial-cultural discrimination (Access: link here).

Aftercare

We have specific protocols to keep the environment as safe as possible for all and particularly for people with lived experience of racial stress and trauma. The instructors will be available between breaks and after the training for upto 30 minutes to support you.

About #TADF

#TADF is a network of psychological practitioners who work with individuals, institutions and training providers to embed anti-discrimination practice into their cirriculum, service design and organisation structure. Our clients include training providers, CPD training providers, awarding bodies, membership bodies and mental health institutes.

* People of the Global Majority (PoGM), such as people from African and Asian Diaspora as well as people of visible mixed race identities.

[1] Mercer, L., Evans, L. J., Turton, R. & Beck, A. (2018). Psychological therapy in secondary mental health care: Access and outcomes by ethnic group. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 1- 8.

[2] Lawton, L., McRae, M., & Gordon, L. (2021). Frontline yet at the back of the queue – improving access and adaptations to CBT for Black African and Caribbean communities. Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, 14, e30. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S1754470X21000271

[3 ] Williams, M. T. (2021). Microaggressions are a form of aggression. Behavior Therapy, 52, 709–719. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. beth.2020.09.001