ABSTRACT

To assess your organization's response to racism, nothing beats a cultural audit-period. Many corporations have developed cultural audits for their organization. Audits have also been developed for human service organizations. I recommend two; both are helpful; both have similar lineage, but are somewhat different in the final product. The first is the Cultural Competence Self-Assessment Instrument (Child Welfare League of America, 1993). It is a very simple checklist that allows participating staff and board members to rate the organization's response to racism in the areas of service delivery, policies and procedures, governance, procurement, and personnel. The instrument is proscriptive in that it embeds ameliorative strategies in the self-assessment items. There is no cumulative score and no assignation of a label. Participants have three responses (no progress, some progress, progress complete) for each of the items. Organizations interested in undergoing a self-study without becoming shell-shocked should consider this audit.