Draft

The National Institute for Multicultural Competence (NIMC)

Town Hall/Plenary Meetings to Promote Multicultural Competence and Social Justice

by

Michael D’Andrea, Ed.D.

Introduction: Multicultural counseling advocates have worked long and hard over the past 35 years to foster a paradigm shift in the fields of counseling and psychology.  The paradigm shift that is occurring in these fields as a result of the efforts of many persons in the multicultural counseling movement is forging a view of mental health, psychological disorder, and professional helping that is very different from traditional psychological and counseling practices in the United States. 

            One of the major advancements in the multicultural movement is the codification of numerous competencies and guidelines that have been formally adopted the two largest professional organizations for psychologists and counselors in the world.  This includes the recent endorsement of the multicultural guidelines for education and training, research, and practice by the American Psychological Association (APA, 2003) and the multicultural and advocacy competencies by the American Counseling Association (ACA, 2003).

            Clearly, the formal endorsement of these guidelines and competencies represent major breakthroughs in the development of these two organizations.  However, such endorsement does not guarantee that these guidelines and competencies will be effectively infused into our training programs, research endeavors, and professional practices.  To help facilitate the development and implementation of these guidelines and competencies in the fields of counseling and psychology, The National Institute for Multicultural Competence (NIMC) has undertaken a major grassroots advocacy initiative that is intentionally designed to increase the number of persons in the fields of counseling and psychology who will develop and implement these guidelines and competencies in their work. 

Description of the intervention: Fundamentally, this intervention involves collaborating with the organizers of several professional counseling and psychology conferences and conventions to plan and implement a series of Town Hall/Plenary meetings.  The specific conferences and conventions that are specifically targeted for this intervention include: the Diversity Challenge at Boston College, the Multicultural Roundtable at Teachers College, the National Multicultural Summit, and the annual ACA and APA conventions.

            The Town Hall/Plenary meetings will be comprised of three interfacing components.  This includes:

[1] time in which varius persons in the multicultural counseling movement will briefly state how they have and are currently implementing the APA guidelines and ACA competencies into their training programs, research endeavors, and professional-clinical practice;

[2] a segment of time when individuals from the various communities in which the conferences and conventions that are listed above are convened will have the opportunity to share their perspectives of the types of services, guidelines, and competencies that professional counselors and psychologists need to keep in mind when striving to meet the personal, psychological, and spiritual needs of persons in their communities; and

[3] time in which the persons who are participating in the abovementioned conferences will be ale to publically state how they plan to increase their commitment to the multicultural counseling movement by stating specific ways in which they will implement any of the APA guidelines and ACA competencies that they have thought about and been inspired to implement as a result of listening and learning from the persons participating in the first two components of the Town Hall/Plenary meetings.  These individual commitments for future action will be recorded and become a part of a data base that will be useful in determing the ways in which the APA guidelines and ACA competencies are being implemented across the United States as well as assessing the effectiveness of this planned intervention 

Research: Counseling and psychology students, faculty members, researchers, and practitioners will be encouraged to participate in an on-going qualitative study of the impact of these Town Hall/Plenary meetings.  Such research will include studying the impact of individual Town Hall/Plenary meetings as well as making comparisons across the geographic regions where these meetings will be held.