discussion

Professionals in all areas from business to counseling commonly anticipate possible cultural differences with clients. Do you agree that the differences can compromise the services that clients receive unless effectively resolved? Give your thoughts on position below.

Given today’s environment, businesses need culturally diverse teams of employees (Blanding, 2013).  It seems, however, that cultural differences occur regularly and even affect those around the problem, not just the person or people directly involved.  The word that defines those around that are affected is ambient.  These are observers of what is going on (Blanding, 2013).  A great example that (Blanding, 2013) uses is when children are affected by their parent’s divorce or fighting.  They are not the ones that are fighting or getting the divorce but feel the effects of it.   But then again, world views when it comes to culturally sensitive practice be neither good or bad nor right or wrong (Weber, 2004).

At the jail, we experienced our first officer that was transgender.  This officer was a male who identified as a female.  She had her name legally changed and brought up many things that made us look at our policies for change.  Our restrooms were one person bathrooms but labeled men and women.  We now have unisex bathrooms.  Our department is writing a policy that addresses this issue specifically.  We experienced many officers that did not want to address this officer as she or her for religious reasons.  We had to speak with those officers about our harassment policy and advised them to call her by her last name as most do anyways to avoid that issue.  The other issue that we had as a department was which officers could work which pods.  At the time our new boss started, females could work male pods, but males could not work a female pod.  Most of us felt that was sexist and unfair but no one had worked to change it.  When our new boss came in, he changed it where males could work female pods.  There was a lot of push back at first because the male officers were certain that the female inmates would file complaints on them constantly.  This was not the case.  In fact, most of the time the males get more respect working with the female inmates.   ​​​​​​​  ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​