Volume_4_Issue_1_Digest

TPC D igest 13 Kristopher G. Hall is a doctoral student at the University of Central Florida. Sejal Barden is an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida. Abigail Conley is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Correspondence can be addressed to Kristopher G. Hall, University of Central Florida, College of Education and Human Performance, 12494 University Boulevard, Orlando, FL 32816, kristopher.g.hall@knights.ucf.edu. A s counseling moves into a world that includes more diverse clients, it is imperative that counselors-in-training receive every tool necessary to properly engage multicultural clients. Counselors face many barriers to engagement with diverse clients, including stigma in seeking mental health treatment and mistrust of majority-cul- ture counselors. Both stigma and mistrust add to the reduction in minority clients’ help-seek- ing behaviors, possibly making initial sessions difficult. These barriers, while pervasive, can be mediated with the therapeutic alliance that the client and counselor build together. Currently, most multicultural instruction has been created using the Tripartite Model (TM) as its basis, focusing on knowledge, awareness and skills. Both the Council for Ac- creditation of Counseling and Related Educa- tional Programs (CACREP) and the American Counseling Association (ACA) have mandat- ed that diversity be included in instruction and best practices. In order to be compliant, coun- selor educators have found various ways to include multicultural learning in their respec- tive curricula. Researchers, however, have found that the bulk of multicultural instruction focuses on the knowledge and awareness por- tions of the TM, minimizing the component of how to best implement multicultural skills. As a result, students may be knowledgeable of their own and other cultures and aware of their own biases, but at a loss for ways to ap- ply this new information. A Relational-Cultural Framework: Emphasizing Relational Dynamics and Multicultural Skill Development – DIGEST Kristopher G. Hall Sejal Barden Abigail Conley