Culturally-Affirming Service-Learning for Counselors-in-Training: Child-Parent Relationship Therapy Training with Spanish-Speaking Families.

The Spanish-speaking community is the largest underserved language group in the United States. To advance social justice advocacy and multicultural humility for this language group, the field of counselor education needs to create pedagogical scaffolding for non-Spanish-speaking counselors-in-training to work with interpreters to support Spanish-speaking families, while also enhancing language-concordant training for Spanish-English bilingual counselors-in-training. We utilized a critical race research design to explore six counselors-in-training’s experience participating in service-learning through online facilitation of Child-Parent Relationship Therapy with Spanish-speaking families. Interpretative phenomenological analysis of qualitative data yielded four major themes: (a) collaboration, (b) improved awareness, (c) growth and strength, and (d) the need for more resources. Findings highlight the importance of iterative pedagogical and service-learning opportunities and supervision to enhance counselors-in-training’s culturally affirming interventions, knowledge, and social justice advocacy skills. Limitations and future directions are discussed.