Your Values, My Values: Multicultural Services in Developmental Disabi

Beyond "Cultural Competency" reprinted, with permission of the author, from Disability Studies Quarterly summer 2001 special issue, "Engaging Anthropology in Disability Studies." Beyond Cultural Competency by Devva Kasnitz, Ph.D., Mary Switzer Fellow In Your Values, My Values: Multicultural Services in Developmental Disabilities, Lilah Morton Pengra (2000, Paul H. Brooks, Baltimore) has written an unusually successful and useful book. Marketed for service providers, it also belongs in the collections of disability studies scholars and applied anthropologists. And, it is a good read. It is not a research piece. For those interested in Pengra in research mode, I direct you to her dissertation. This book is both theoretical and practical. She uses a theoretical framework of "value based services" and "schema analysis," the analysis of groups of meanings and norms that together underlie "definitions and beliefs that specify what features of the environment to notice" (p. 26). This framework is well described and documented with scholarly care. Her bibliography alone is valuable. In the heart of the book each new topic is introduced with reference to the literature and demonstrated with examples of real-life situations. She culls these examples from her South Dakota career in social services to people considered developmentally disabled, many of them Dakota or Lakota. She then follows with service protocols. These are actual fill-in-the-blanks and check-off assessment, progress, and evaluation tools. She closes each chapter with "Points to Remember." At first this seemed too "teachy" to me. Then, I realized, that is exactly the point. You can read the book on many levels. Why not remind those who may skip some of the scholarly text and go directly to the protocols what to remember during their use as you photo-copy and enlarge and try to decide if you will need to retype and edit a protocol for your own situation. The book also hangs together if you skip the protocols entirely and read for the theory and its implications. Taken together, policy makers and service directors will gain insight. I called this brief book reviewing "Beyond Cultural Competency" out of my biases. I remember Cultural Competency as an idea creeping in and around medical anthropology more than twenty years ago. It started innocently enough with the assertion that service providers needed to understand the culture of the people with whom they work. However, it quickly devolved into a cook-book approach, this is what to do with a Latino patient, this is how to treat a Chinese person, Native American, Black, etc. This is more dangerous than a travel phrase book without a dictionary. And who certifies "competence?" Hiring a token person of the culture in question then became the next step. This, of course, puts tremendous pressure on the supposedly "representative" staff member. First, it ignores intracultural variation. Second, if the individual wants to succeed in their career in

Very well thought out book, which could be used as a neat reference for all who work in the helping profession. Ms. Pengra establishes herself as knowledgeable in her assesments of people espeacially ones with disabilites. She cuts through the analytical language making it understandable for all. Thus, giving them the ability to apply towards one's own daily living. Highly recommended.

I have worked in an urban school district for over 15 years as a Physical Therapist. My work started out mostly in the schools, where the values of the teachers/administration in each school were accepted without question. "You came to my class/school, you hold my values" was a given. As I moved "down" the scale to work with younger children - preschoolers and infant/toddlers - I found myself more and more in the homes of these children. What started out as "I am in your home to help you with what I think you need" has, over time, and through lots of food-for-thought sessions on my part turned into "what can I do to help you with what you know you need". I have turned into more of a listener than a doer - which seems to be what many folks are wanting the most. I think it becomes the most clear that I need to listen when I have to depend on an interpreter to tell me not only the words that are spoken but the values the family holds and how they view my intrusion into their lives. "Your Values, My Values" affirmed my experiences and helped me to go many steps further into considering how important it is to understand the values of each person and to be sure that I am providing assistance that they view as helpful and meaningful. I will never again form an opinion about a person or his/her behavior without first listening and allowing the situation to "play out" awhile before I jump in with my "solutions". The examples the author gave of actual situations were quite helpful to explain the principles she wrote about, as were the summaries at the end of the chapters. I found myself saying, "Aha!" many times as I read the book - especially in the areas of control and privacy, as these are issues I deal with often in working with families with infants and toddlers who have developmental delays. The assessment of the schema of theft was most interesting - in fact, I shared it with my husband, and we think about it when we find ourselves in some of the situations that were described in the assessment. A big THANK YOU goes to Pengra for her insights and experiences and for her efforts to share them through her book. I found it very interesting and helpful, and I know that others will also benefit from her experiences when they read it.S. Jarratt PT, MS   

I am a city planner for an older, industrial, urban city. While I do not work with developmentally disabled people, I do work with community groups on land use issues. Decisions I make affect where people live, work and play. The nature of my work influences the values of my community and hopefully should be reflective of it. Hence my interest in this book.One section I found valuable was a discussion on decision making. I deal with community groups trying to reach a consensus on a variety of land use issues or elected leaders trying to make a decision. Learning how values influence decision-making styles opened my eyes and allowed me to evaluate how I communicate with the public, structure my decisions or make policy recommendations. The information provides a good guide to assist in determining where changes in the "routine" can be used to provide better services to the public. Dr. Pengra provides recommendations on how to address situations where your values are either unknown or different from a service receiver's. I could draw corollaries to working with community groups and other consumers.While the book deals with providing services to individuals, it provides easy to use assessments to assist the reader in making determinations about themselves on various issues. (Easy to use does not imply you like what you learn!) It provides a practical tool to learn more about yourself, your customers and provides the information necessary to create positive, effective action that will ultimately gain a happy consumer. The book will challenge you to change your behavior.The book also delves into such topics as anger, pain and empowerment -- topics near and dear to all public officials' daily work. Learning how culture influences the expression of anger and pain was almost scary. Realizing a change in approach could help empower the consumer was refreshing. While it may seem obvious that there are cultural barriers -- the author offers practical advice and assessments that can be applied on the job to do something to overcome the barriers. You begin to see that flexibility might not seem like a bad or terrifying thing. I am sure as a service provider there will a certain level of discomfort but the rewards of a satisfied customer should eventually outweigh those feelings as it appears to have occurred in the author's experiences.

Everyone who works with developmentally disabled adults, as I have, should read and reread this book. It's that good.Dr. Pengra and her staff are like caring detectives as they uncover what values shape behavior of a service receiver. They look at a service receiver's behavior, including problem behavior, with real understanding and evaluate how that problem behavior can be redirected, modified, or changed in coordination with the service receiver's values. She recomends that we should not impose our own values on a person. Everyone has values and they may be different from ours but not better or worse.Just one other thing, when you get the book, rush to the Xerox machine and copy the surveys. Have your family members, your coworkers, and friends answer the questions on the surveys. Note how different and/or alike we all are in our values.