Project Description

Practice Notes, Issue 10, Winter 2001
Contributors: Esther Wattenberg & Annette Semanchin

Culturally competent practice is generally recognized as indispensable for child welfare practitioners, yet skills and techniques are somewhat elusive. Cultures have differing views and standards for acceptable parenting practices. The stakes are high in assessing risk of harm to vulnerable children. How can the practitioner interpret, assess, and then address the problems of families whose lives and experiences are so different from their own? Ethnography provides a framework for delivering culturally competent services. This issue of Practice Notes provides an introduction to ethnographic interviewing.

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Practice Notes was developed in collaboration between CASCW affiliates and public child welfare practitioners. They were intended as a reference for practitioners, linking research with best practices. Issues were published between 1997 and 2010.