What is a culturally competent assessment? Discuss its importance.

Answers may vary. Culturally competent assessments require knowledge of cultural norms, acculturation, and language differences; the ability to differentiate between individual and culturally linked attributes; the initiative to seek out needed information so that evaluations are not biased and services are culturally appropriate; and an understanding of the ways that cultural differences may reveal themselves in the assessment process. Cultures vary widely in their prescribed patterns of child rearing, communication, family member roles, mate selection, and care of the aged-to name just a few areas of differentiation. Knowledge of your client's cultural norms is indispensable when his or her cultural background differs markedly from your own. Without such knowledge, you may make serious errors in assessing both individual and interpersonal systems, because patterns that are functional in one cultural context may prove problematic in another, and vice versa. Errors in assessment can lead to culturally insensitive interventions that may aggravate rather than diminish clients' problems. The necessary knowledge about cultural norms is not easy to obtain, however. It requires a baseline understanding of areas of difference and histories and risks of oppression experienced by different groups, self-examination for biases and prejudices, and ongoing conversation with clients and other key informants.
Even in homogeneous cultural subgroups, wide variations also exist among individuals. As a consequence, being knowledgeable about a given group is necessary but not sufficient for understanding the behavior of individual members of the group. It is important to remember that cross-cultural and cross-racial work must be tailored to each individual client. The task confronting practitioners, therefore, is to differentiate between behavior that is culturally mediated and behavior that is a product of individual personality and life experience.