Is cultural competence enough? The call for integrating cultural humility into social work practice in a minority community

Abstract Social workers must exhibit a high level of cultural competence, which involves acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to work sensitively and competently with minority populations. However, maintaining comprehensive cultural knowledge in increasingly intercultural communities is challenging. This difficulty has led to the development of the cultural humility model, which emphasizes understanding clients’ unique experiences and viewing them as experts on their own lives. Using social workers’ experiences when working with the Ethiopian community in Israel, this qualitative study examined social workers’ perceptions when applying cultural competence within a community setting. The total sample consisted of thirty social workers: thirteen of Ethiopian origin and seventeen of non-Ethiopian origin participated in a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis identified three themes: (1) the need for cultural training; (2) modelling and cultural understanding, and (3) managing cultural insensitivity and accusations of prejudice and racism. The majority of the participants identified significant challenges when managing cultural competence regarding communicating and interacting with the Ethiopian Jewish community. Therefore, we recommend promoting the concept of cultural humility, both in practice and in social work education, to better meet the needs of the professionals and the members of the minority community as well.