By: Jason Jowers
On October 7th, 2021, OneOp hosted a webinar on “Culturally Competent Responses to Youth with Problematic Sexual Behavior.” This webinar was another great installment in our Sexual Behavior in Children & Youth (SBCY) Series. This series has been ongoing since May 2019, with plans to continue on into 2022.
The goals of this webinar focused primarily on understanding the complexities of cultural identities and how it influences views of mental health services, with a specific focus on the significance of military family culture. We talked about identifying how health-related beliefs, practices, and cultural values influence the understanding of problematic sexual behavior. Also, we discussed the influence of cultural values on treatment and therapy concerns. Finally, we talked about the role of service/mental health providers to communicate awareness, compassion, and cultural safety.
We were joined in this webinar by Ingrid Mürrle, who has worked in the provision of mental health services for over 30 years. Ingrid has used her bilingual and bicultural skills to facilitate work with Latino families.
As a Social Worker in Alexandria, Virginia, Ingrid assisted with emergency work in Child Protection Services, the police, and other departmental needs at the Department of Social Services. After relocating to Southern California and settling in at Children’s Institute for the last 22 years, Ingrid has provided direct clinical services to hundreds of children and families who have experienced child abuse and neglect, as well as family and community violence. She provides expertise in working with victims of sexual abuse and youth exhibiting problematic sexual behaviors.
In her current role as the NCTSN Clinical Training Manager at CII, Ingrid is primarily focused on raising the standard of care to improve services to traumatized children, their families, and communities in Los Angeles.
Webinar Highlights
We wanted to share some of the highlights from this webinar session that are beneficial for service providers and continue to provide strategies and resources when working specifically with military children and families.
- We began this webinar with an overview of cultural identity and how it influences views of mental health, with special consideration of what that potentially looks like within military family culture.
- We talked about how cultural beliefs usually are first cultivated within the family system for most kids. This begins at an early age. These aspects of cultural identity often include ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, socio-economic factors, and religion. Also, the uniqueness of military culture and how that looks for military families was included in formations of cultural identity.
- Ingrid then talked about the ways sexual development for kids can look based on cultural identity and introduced ways of looking at problematic sexual behavior from a cultural lens, particularly parental responses to PSB and their kids.
- Access to treatment and cultural views of therapy were discussed from a cultural perspective.
- Ingrid then talked about cultural competence and cultural humility and ways that mental health providers can develop these skills. Cultural competence and cultural humility aren’t goals to achieve for a provider, but more so an ongoing educational journey for clinicians.
- Finally, we wrap up talking over therapeutic techniques and a cause for unity and creating understanding across potential cultural differences.
Archived Viewing and CE Credit Info
If you missed the live event, you can watch the YouTube archived recording on the webinar event page. Free continuing education credits for this event are still available for licensed social workers, professional counselors, case managers, Certified Family Life Educators, and family therapists. The Case Management CE credits are available through October 2022 and the UT Social Work CE credits through October 2023.
And be sure and join us for our next SBCY Series webinars coming up in December 2021, which you can RSVP for now! And sign up for our mailing list to stay up to date on future 2022 SBCY programming!
Blog Image: OneOp SBCY Series Logo
