Human Services Research InstituteMulticultural Competency
Nationwide, human service systems struggle to represent, reach out to, hear from, and support their diverse constituencies. This diversity might include varying cultures of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, socio-economic status, regional location, language spoken, sexual orientation, level of education, among other differences. Cultural competence, in the human service arena, includes the ability to understand, communicate with, interact and support an organization’s constituency. HSRI is committed to supporting public agencies and community support-giving organizations to adapt their policies and practices to assure the highest level of cultural competency. To this end, HSRI has prepared instruments and toolkits to assist practitioners and has conducted studies to determine best practice in cultural competence.