What Is Cultural Competence?

Cultural competence describes a counsellor’s capacity to work effectively with clients whose cultural backgrounds, identities, values, and worldviews differ from their own. The term encompasses knowledge (understanding that different groups have different histories, practices, and experiences), skills (the practical ability to communicate respectfully across difference), and attitudes (genuine curiosity, humility, and willingness to examine one’s own assumptions).

Some writers prefer the term “cultural humility” to cultural competence, arguing that “competence” implies a fixed endpoint – a box ticked – whereas humility conveys an ongoing, lifelong commitment to learning and self-examination. In practice, both concepts are useful: counsellors need some foundational knowledge, and they need the humility to know how much they do not know.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality, a concept developed by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw (1989), describes how multiple aspects of a person’s identity – race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, religion, age – overlap and interact to shape their experiences of privilege and oppression. A Black woman in poverty experiences the world differently from a white woman in poverty, and differently again from a Black woman with financial security. Neither race nor gender nor class alone captures her full experience.

For counsellors, intersectionality is a reminder that clients cannot be reduced to a single category. A Muslim client who is also LGBTQ+, working class, and living with a disability faces a specific configuration of social experiences that cannot be understood by consulting a single “diversity” framework. The counsellor’s task is to remain curious and invite the client to define what their identity means to them.

The BACP Ethical Framework and Anti-Discriminatory Practice

The BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions (2018) identifies a commitment to anti-discriminatory practice as a core ethical responsibility. It states that practitioners should “actively work to understand and eliminate discrimination, whether personal, institutional, or societal.” This moves beyond simply avoiding overtly prejudiced behaviour – it requires active engagement with how power, privilege, and structural inequality operate within and beyond the therapeutic relationship.

Anti-discriminatory practice means examining the systems and structures that shape clients’ lives, not just their individual psychology. A client presenting with low self-worth may have internalised messages from a society that repeatedly devalues people who look, believe, or love as they do. Effective counselling engages with both the internal and the external dimensions of that experience.

How a Counsellor’s Own Assumptions Affect the Therapeutic Relationship

Counsellors are not neutral observers. They carry their own cultural conditioning, biases, and blind spots into every session, whether or not they are aware of them. This is known as cultural countertransference – the ways in which a counsellor’s own cultural background influences their responses to a client.

Examples might include: assuming a client from a collectivist culture is “enmeshed” in their family because they seek parental approval; pathologising spiritual experiences that fall outside a secular, Western worldview; interpreting a client’s indirect communication style as avoidance; or making assumptions about sexual orientation based on a client’s relationship history. Each of these errors can rupture trust and prevent the client from feeling genuinely seen.

Supervision is an important mechanism for bringing these blind spots into awareness. A good supervisor will help counsellors notice when their cultural assumptions are influencing their formulations or interventions.

Working Across Specific Dimensions of Diversity

While no article can comprehensively cover every dimension of diversity, some areas warrant particular attention in counsellor training.

Race and ethnicity: Research consistently shows that Black, Asian, and minority ethnic clients are underrepresented in talking therapies and more likely to drop out of treatment. Counsellors should be willing to engage with race directly when relevant, rather than adopting a “colour-blind” stance that can leave clients feeling unseen.

Religion and spirituality: Belief and spiritual practice are central to many clients’ lives and should be engaged with respectfully rather than treated as secondary to psychological formulation. This includes being aware of the diverse practices within major faith traditions, not just between them.

Gender and sexuality: LGBTQ+ clients may present with experiences of minority stress – the chronic stress of navigating a world that may be hostile or indifferent to their identity. Counsellors should be affirming, avoid heteronormative assumptions, and be familiar with the particular difficulties facing bisexual, non-binary, and transgender clients, who face specific and often compounded challenges.

Disability: The social model of disability, which locates disabling barriers in society rather than in the individual, is a useful framework for counsellors working with disabled clients. Adjustments to session format, location, timing, and communication are part of equitable practice, not exceptional accommodation.

Social class: Class is often overlooked in diversity training. A counsellor’s own class background can create unconscious bias about what “healthy” relating looks like, what goals are worth pursuing, or what counts as a problem worth bringing to therapy.

Developing Multicultural Competence

Sue and Sue’s multicultural counselling competencies (first proposed in 1982 and revised multiple times since) describe three domains of development: awareness of one’s own cultural assumptions, knowledge of clients’ cultural backgrounds and worldviews, and skills to work effectively across difference. This model remains widely cited in counsellor training literature and provides a useful self-assessment framework for continuing professional development.