Cultural Competence Training

Delivered by Baffour Ababio and Sega Habtom.

The workshop will draw on clinical examples and work as well as the intercultural experience to put forward the processes involved in working at the juncture of the client’s inner and outer experiences. The evocation of shame and avoidance in the dyadic or group encounter of intersecting differences and sameness will also be explored. “Any clinical encounter that does not take into account the client’s whole life experience and does not consider their race, culture, gender or social values, can only fragment that person.” (Jafar Kareem, co-founder of Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre). In the workshop Jafar’s quote will be applied to societal/individual assumptions with regards to racism and sexism. There will be an opportunity for participants to work on some of their own material from their practice.

Through case material and film attendees will dynamically work through concepts/themes and questions such as:

• Institutional racism/domination/oppression. Participants will explore how clients from minority communities deploy strategies to cope with their varying levels of internal and external experiences of persecution.

• This workshop aims to enhance participants’ self-awareness, empathic knowledge and understanding of other cultures and conceptualisation of identity formation. Attendees in exploring their own processes, whether from dominant or minority groups will be more attuned to the impact of their therapeutic engagements with their clients.

• It will touch on the extent to which therapy/mental health organisations facilitate or inhibit the capacity of its practitioners to critically engage in conversations around cultural competency.

• The workshop will allow for the exploration of how cultural competency can be applied in supervision. It will therefore look at the experience of supervision from both angles; as a supervisee and as a supervisor. The group work will discuss and reflect on what a culturally competent supervision might look like. We know that any therapeutic work to be of benefit to both practitioner and client requires a good enough thinking space, provided through supervision to facilitate the process.

• Cultural competent work operates within the context of the external realities of the historic as well the present. Participants will look at the penetration of political shifts in the UK such as Brexit into the clinical engagements of practitioners. This conversation can be framed as the frontiers of culturally competent thinking.

Baffour Ababio is a psychoanalytic intercultural psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in private practice and at Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre. Baffour completed his training at University College London and the Guild of psychotherapist and is a member of UKCP and BAPPS (British Association for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Supervision). Alongside his clinical role Baffour developed a career in managing mental health services integrating a community based response to support recovery from a broad range of mental health problems.

Sega Habtom has over a decade’s worth of experience at Nafsiyat, working with clients with diverse and complex cases, including; sexual abuse, torture, domestic violence and asylum and refugee related issues. Sega qualified with an Advanced Diploma in Integrative Counselling, as well as a Post Graduate Certificate in Therapeutic Communication with Children at the University of East London. Sega speaks Arabic, English, Amharic, Tigre and Tigrinya.

* Please note, lunch is not included. We do have a small kitchen and there are many lunch options around Archway underground.