Multi-cultural challenges on counselling involving persons with disability.

 A brief summary of selected empirical reviews

In order to attain the objectives of this study, a number of empirical reviews were analysed in relation to the multi-cultural challenges on counselling involving persons with disability. To start with, this section provides a summary of five of the empirical reviews studied.

The first is the work of Narayanan (2018), which looked at the challenges faced by disabled people at work in Malaysia. The motivation for the study was based on the understanding that while there are about 531,962 people registered with disability in Malaysia, of which 8% are working and mainly employed in the private sector, many corporations in the country are still not able to provide the disabled community with equal opportunity in the employment sector. Findings from the study indicate that disabled people are still being significantly discriminated against in different aspects of their workplace. To name a few, such challenges include an inaccessible physical environment, a lack of relevant assistive technology, and people's negative attitudes toward those with disabilities.

In another study, Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al. (2021) looked at counselors' understanding and practice of multicultural counseling in Malaysia. The authors point out that in order to make counseling meaningful and culturally relevant, it is pivotal for the counselor to have a practical counseling model that cuts across context-specific features and is aligned with the values and needs of the specific culture and population. Findings from the study suggest that the Malaysian professional counsellors, as a group, see themselves as multi-culturally competent and some of the pronounced challenges they face are: counseling of clients that are culturally challenging; counseling on problems/issues that are culturally challenging; and managing personal challenges.

The third work is that of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al. (2019), which looked at professional counselors’ perception and experience of multicultural counselling in Malaysia, which was a qualitative study. Findings from the study reveal that numerous themes and categories emerged as a result of four probing topics (understanding of multicultural counseling, definition of multicultural competence, characteristics of a multi-culturally competent counselor, and challenging multicultural cases. Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin, (2017), which looked at the nature and extent of perceived multicultural counseling competence (MCC) based on a study of 508 professional counselors in Malaysia, using a national survey approach, found that five factors constitute MCC and they also yield significant differences in perceived MCC as: ethnicity, highest education, and participation in multicultural training.

Finally, the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin, (2017) was also reviewed. This work looked at the barriers and challenges in the practice of multicultural counseling in Malaysia and is also based on a qualitative interview study. Findings from this study revealed five emerging themes based on the participants’ counselors' responses to the barriers and challenges encountered in their practice of multicultural counseling in Malaysia. These challenges were found to be related to the counselors, clients, parenting issues, third-party, and specific context characteristics.

proposed multicultural counselling approach for Mr. Saad

This proposal is based on Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al’s (2021) work on the process of multicultural counseling, from the Malaysian perspective. The thematic analysis from their work revealed that there are three emergent themes that can be used to describe how Malaysian counselors engage with culture and diversity within the counseling industry, and they are broadly in line with the three stages of the general counseling process: pre-counseling, during counseling, and post-counseling.

Pre-counseling stage

This stage involved making culturally appropriate preparations for counseling (Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al., 2021). Based on their study, the potential counselor will be aware of the issues and have background knowledge about their potential clients (Mr. Saad) and such knowledge should include the client’s cultural background. The counselor should also be self-aware of their own cultural background, self-perceived competence and attributes, and awareness, knowledge, and understanding of culturally difficult cases as well as the exact way to handle these issues based on cultural skills and expertise within the Malaysian context. These understandings are considered necessary for ensuring that multicultural counseling becomes an eventual success. To better demonstrate this, we look at the case of Tharma, a male Indian Hindu counselor who counseled a Malay Muslim housewife with reference to depression and marital issues she suffered as a result of her abusive spouse. He stated that the entire counseling process started with self-preparation about the issue that is actually under consideration. Prior to beginning the counseling, he would normally consult with his Muslim friends to determine whether certain strategies could be used and if they were appropriate.Thus, such reference allows him to better understand the context under consideration and ensure that he is on track to buffer the right solution for the issue at hand. This is the same expectation for the counselor that will handle the case of Mr. Saad.

During counseling, engage with diversity and culture

At this stage, the counselor must have initiated counseling with Mr. Saad, and the stage is characterized by three main features: therapeutic multicultural relationship, case conceptualization, and culturally-appropriate strategies or interventions. Based on findings from the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al., 2021), the associated themes that describe these stages will be used to guide the entire counseling process. They are: 1) being engaged in the process will amount to negotiating cultural differences in multicultural counseling; 2) the client’s concerns or issues should be assessed based on culturally appropriate and sensitive measures; 3) the counseling will need to set culturally relevant counseling goals; and finally 4) there is a need to develop culturally sensitive and appropriate interventions or strategies. Basically, this stage is all about how to ensure that the decisions being made by the counselor as it relates to the issues under consideration are in line with the culture of the client, as such is the only way to enhance overall adoption of the counseling measures and put the client on an easy path to rehabilitation.

Based on the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al., 2021), most of the participants feel that this is the most vital stage in the entire counseling process. This is because it encompasses addressing the cultural differences that exist between the counselor and the clients before making any further decision to proceed with assisting the clients. As a result of this, some of the participants in their study actually needed more time in this phase, and this is also expected in the case of Mr. Saad, as the counseling will need to take more time to critically understand the issue based on cultural provisions and also provide solutions that are aligned with these said cultural provisions. Still, in the case of Tharma, the Indian Hindu counselor, he pointed out that the initial stage of this phase was actually challenging because the counselor had to deal with the discomforts that come with having to make oneself comfortable with the clients and vice versa. Therefore, he would normally apply humor, and the majority of the clients making use of his services were found to feel at ease when the counselor applied more humor to the process. Therefore, as an example, when a girl walks into the counseling session, she will be asked "Why are you here?" and the girl will respond, "I ran from the house. The counselor might apply humor, like, you ran, why didn’t you walk? This is based on the experience of a Malaysian counselor, and the outcome was that the counselors would end up being picked for subsequent counseling sessions because the clients seem to be at ease with them as a result of the humor they apply to their counseling process.

Essentially, the implication is that the counsellors will need to have background knowledge and practice experience, as well as the ability to be creative in different contexts and offer fast-paced responses through multicultural competence, knowledge, skills, awareness, and effective engagement with the cultural challenges or issues being faced by their clients. The entire process is better demonstrated below, based on findings from Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al., 2021.

• Building a therapeutic multicultural relationship should begin with a look at the client as they are and what influences their life.Then, this will be followed by a cultural outlook, asking the client about their background and also highlighting the differences with that of the counselor, before actually going into the real realm of addressing the issue.
• Exploring culturally different clients’ concerns or issues – the counselor will somehow have to stand with Mr. Saad. not just by the client’s side but also be able to wear his shoes in order to really understand the issue under consideration. Thus, when the counselor gazes at the client, he or she should be able to keep aside the differences in language, gender, or other physical features and focus predominantly on the issue at hand. Thus, the counselor should be able to look at the problem from different angles and understand it vividly in order to come up with the right solution.
• At this stage, the counselor can take a look at their upbringing, language, gender, and so on, in order to gain an understanding of the client’s perspective because all these attributes will have an influence on how the client looks at the issues and also faces them. Therefore, the counselor should seek to see all these factors in the case of Mr. Saad and how they affect the client in addressing his own issues. This is the best way to gain an advanced understanding of the client and their present issues.

Post-counseling

The focus is mainly on evaluating the outcome of the counseling process, and as Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al., 2021) pointed out, this outcome is based on data analysis presented from how the client describes their own post-counseling experience. It will come in the form of changes in the former clients, how the counselor is satisfied with the engagement process, and the lessons that have been gained from the engagement experience. The expectation is that when changes have been noticed to occur in the former client, the implication will be that the counseling process was a success. Thus, in the case of Mr. Saad, if the counselor is able to notice positive post-counseling changes, the implication is that the counseling process was a success or other corrective measures can be enacted in order to address the case of negative post-experience change. Some of these changes that the counselors should look out for (based on the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin et al., 2021) are: the willingness or desire of the clients to change; self-acceptance; self-understanding; and the efforts being made by these clients to continue keeping in touch with the counselors. On the other hand, participants from the said study also assess the quality of their counseling by making reference to their satisfaction level with the entire counseling process.

Comparative analysis of barriers and challenges in counseling: Malaysia vs the Western Nations

Generally speaking, the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin (2017) revealed that Malaysian counseling mainly adapted and adopted the U.S. counseling model, with discussion of main findings from their work based on a comparative framework for MCC theory, practice, and assessment between the United States and Malaysia. On the first hand, their work revealed that five dimensions (in the form of multicultural knowledge, multicultural understanding, multicultural awareness, macrocultural skills, and microcultural skills) constitute the multicultural competence of Malaysian counselors. Previous studies have also found similar dimensions (Holcomb-McCoy & Myers, 1999) as being determinants of multicultural competence. However, the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin (2017) shows that there are certain similarities and differences shared in relation to the meaning of the items and how the dimensions cut across culture based on the notion that the knowledge, awareness, and skills dimensions were discovered in both the Malaysian and United States studies. When it comes to Malaysia, it was observed that there was a lower reliability coefficient for the multicultural awareness dimensions, while other dimensions recorded high reliability coefficients, a pattern of results that is somewhat consistent with the findings that have emerged in past studies (Kim et al., 2003; Whitney, 2006), and a further suggestion that the multicultural awareness construct is more diverse when compared with that of skills or knowledge (D’Andrea, Daniels, & Heck, 1991, p. 145). Therefore, the items employed in measuring multicultural awareness might eventually yield less internal consistency as a group when compared to those used in measuring other dimensions. The implication of these findings is that MCCs should be developed among counselors through education and training programs, one that is capable of attending to the issues in the vital areas of multicultural counseling (as: multicultural knowledge, awareness, and skills) and also capable of enhancing the qualities of the counselor in order to ensure that they can better understand diversity and culture and multiculturally experience the differences between clients.

The second highlight from the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin, (2017) is that the result of the study suggests that professional counselors in Malaysia, as a collective community, consider themselves to be multiculturally competent. Malaysian counselors consider themselves the most competent when it comes to multicultural knowledge and understanding of the dimensions, which are the two main qualities that a multiculturally competent counselor will need to have, based on the proposal made in the model developed by Sue et al. (1992). However, there is also a contrasting finding, as they considered themselves to be the least when it comes to multicultural awareness and skills dimensions. This is a finding that actually contradicts the discovery made by Holcomb-McCoy and Myers’ (1999) research, in which their Malaysian respondents consider themselves to be the most competent on the multicultural awareness dimension and the least competent when it comes to the knowledge dimension. In any case, the findings of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin (2017) offer a contrasting suggestion, namely that Malaysian counselors' knowledge and understanding of diversity and culture in Malaysia is far from what is considered adequate for multicultural awareness and skills.This is also evidenced in the learning objectives of many of the counselor preparation programs in Malaysia, where the emphasis of these programs is on gaining knowledge about the cultural differences that exist within the Malaysian context instead of a broader recognition and successfully dealing with the differences that exist in a counseling process from the perspective of culturally diverse clients, especially when one makes reference to those coming from the minority client population. On the same note, the low ratings that the participants have when it comes to multicultural skills and awareness might be a reflection of their preference for the convenience of culture-match consoling (for instance, consoling services that are based on ethnic-matching) instead of going for multicultural counseling that would allow them to see the broader picture of the whole thing.

On a third note, Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin (2017) shows that the perception of Malaysian counselors about MCC did differ significantly by their ethnicity (Malays, Chinese, India, and others), higher education, and recent professional training that they have acquired in a multicultural setting.

Lastly, while numerous studies suggest that multicultural courses do increase the multicultural competence of counselors (Holcomb-McCoy & Myers, 1999; Robles-Pia & McPherson, 2001; Sodowsky et al., 1998), findings from the Malaysian context, based on the work of Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin, (2017), revealed a contrasting result. Although there is a difference in some studies, it is still consistent with the findings from other studies (Holcomb-McCoy, 2001), where both findings did not provide support for the relationship between completing a multicultural course and the perceived multicultural competence of counselors. Essentially, what these studies illustrate is that, notwithstanding the fact that the Malaysian counseling is modeled around that of the western nations, like the US, there are still differences that exist in terms of what is obtainable between these two nations.

References

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