ABSTRACT
La familia es un sistema de relaciones interdependientes donde los padres no se entienden sin referencia a los hijos, los abuelos a los nietos, los primos a los tíos, los que reciben asistencia sin sus cuidadores. This definition of the family as a system of interdependent relationships has strong support among researchers and practitioners in the field of health and human services (Schultz, Gallagher-Thompson, Haley, & Czaja, 2000). However, there is still a need to recognize the significant role of specific contextual factors and environmental conditions among ethnocultural family and group systems. The conceptual consensus about the family system has to include diversity as a central feature; furthermore, it has to be translated into specific interventions aimed to support family care for culturally diverse older adults with dementia. For example, if you were unable to understand the meaning and concepts expressed in the opening statement, then our first recommendation would be to consider learning and providing services in Spanish as an initial step in understanding how to deliver much-needed assistance to dementia-impacted ethnocultural Latinos and Hispanics. Bicultural and bilingual skills relative to Hispanics are part of the basic training of any intercultural competency model (Valle, 1998). In this chapter, we identify strategies to help community organizations’ staff,
managers, and leaders to promote and create multicultural engagements and dementia interventions directed to ethnically diverse populations, in particular, ethnocultural Hispanics such as Puerto Ricans.
