The Cultural Competency Profile for Child Protection (CCP-CP) is unique to Australia in that it is the only tool that has been both culturally and psychometrically validated as a measure of child protection cultural competence in working with Aboriginal people. The research and therefore evidence base behind the development of the CCP-CP is based upon the CCP and has been extensive.
The development of the CCP was an outcome of the PhD of Adjunct Professor Tracy Westerman and has been adapted to the child protection context. It involved running focus groups and then pilot studies with 40 child protection workers. It has since undergone initial validation with over 300 child protection workers (Westerman & Litten in preparation) as a method of determining the key factors that predict Aboriginal mental health competence in practice. An analysis of these results determined that the Aboriginal community defined cultural competency as being made up of the following key areas:
- Cultural Knowledge. Gauges your local, general, applied, and child development specific knowledge in working with Aboriginal clients,
- Skills & Abilities. Determines your culturally relevant training, counselling, assessment and general practice skills,
- Beliefs and Attitudes. Provides an indication of the extent to which your prevailing beliefs are consistent with working effectively with Aboriginal people in the child protection context,
- Resources and Linkages. Examines the extent to which your networks, community and agency links as well as culture-specific resources are sufficient across child protection notifications, assessments child removal and interventions, and,
- Organisational Cultural Competencies. Gauges your views on how your Organisation supports the cultural competencies of its staff through organisational and staff development
The subdomains of the CCP-CP are outlined at Table 1 below.
DOMAIN | SUBDOMAIN |
---|---|
Cultural Knowledge | Local Cultural Knowledge |
General Child Protection Knowledge | |
Application of Knowledge | |
Cultural Parenting & Child Development Knowledge | |
Skills & Abilities – Child Protection | Training Access |
Culturally Appropriate Counselling & Assessment | |
Culturally Specific Parenting Knowledge | |
Assessment & Intervention | |
Engagement & Contact | |
Awareness & Beliefs | Cultural Empathy |
Emotional Stability & Flexibility | |
Personal Identity | |
Resources & Linkages | Interactions & Awareness |
Links & Referrals | |
Organisational Cultural Competency | Implementation |
Capacity & Commitment |
Table 1: The domains and subdomains of the Cultural Competency – Child Protection Profile (CCP-CP: Westerman, 2019)
The normative data means that average levels of competency have been able to be calculated, thus providing vital information on the nature of the Child Protection workforce within Australia and allowing baseline skills to be compared against a national average or benchmark.
The CCP-CP once completed, provides you with an extensive feedback report which readily translates into a cultural supervision plan. The report then analyses what your results mean in terms of skills in working directly with Aboriginal clients and finally provides a range of strategies geared towards increasing your current levels of cultural competency across each of the above subdomains. View an example Report.
To purchase the test, or any of our other tests, please visit the shop page by clicking here.
For a whole of organisation cultural competency audit please contact IPS.
View the results of IPS’ cultural competency intervention programs