Ethical Dilemmas in Multicultural counselling

Ethical Dilemmas in a Multicultural Setting
Silvia Galea

“An ethical dilemma exists whenever there are good but contradictory ethical reasons to take conflicting and incompatible courses of action.”
(Kitchner, 1984 p.29)

“There is no legitimate way to avoid these ethical struggles.
They are part of our work”. (Pope & Vasquez, 2007 p.125).

Introduction
Cultural competence is fast becoming the new competence in counselling (Barnett 2009, Barnett 2000). As society changes and minorities become more prominent in our society, professionals are ethically bound to learn new skills that help them deliver a culturally sensitive service to clients requesting assistance in the helping profession. (Ridley, Liddle, Hill, & Li, 2001) throw light upon the “many limitations” of different codes of ethics that reflect the values of the dominant culture. A decade before (Sue & Sue 1990) argued that ethical guidelines are by no means neutral and have at best suppressed diversity and often pathologised the behaviour of minorities. According to (Sue & Sue, 1990) this “westernized” set of ethical values falsely put practitioners’ minds at rest for not advocating for a culturally sensitive ethical thinking that takes into account the perspective of minorities and diverse cultures .
These issues become more complex when one takes into account concepts of acculturation (Baptiste 1993)-when migrants decide to relinquish some or most of their unique cultural values in order to adapt to the host society and Biculturalism (Berry 1997) the combination of migrants and host cultural values. Different individuals integrate values to different degrees (Berry, 1997). Further sensitivity and culturally sensitive reflection is also necessary when a client from an ethnic minority comes into the counseling room with issues pertaining to gender or sexual identity.

Ethical Dilemmas in Multicultural Counselling
Silvia Galea

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For the purpose of this paper I

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