This webinar is the third and final part in the series, "Decolonizing Clinical Social Work: Integrating Ubuntu Centred Cultural Humility to Enhance Cultural Competency."
This closing session invites participants to shift from expert–client, saviour–helper dynamics toward authentic co-creation rooted in presence, relational accountability, and shared humanity. Guided by Ubuntu and the Multicultural Orientation framework, we will explore how therapeutic alliance can only be established when cultural and psychological safety are present- conditions that require both cultural and epistemic humility. Through clinical reflections on decolonizing language, we will examine the terminology we use in practice and how words like “client,” “non-compliant,” or “at risk” can unintentionally reinforce hierarchy and harm. Integrating ethical and value bracketing with embodied cultural humility, this session offers a space to reimagine practice through decolonial lenses and to commit to language liberation and relationships that honour dignity, spirit, and collective liberation.
Learning Objectives:
1. Understand cultural competency as an outcome of practising cultural humility in conjunction with other social work skills.
2. Explore the Multicultural Orientation (MCO) framework and begin integrating its principles into practice through culturally and spiritually responsive ways of being.
3. Recognize how the absence of epistemic humility can lead to clinical misinterpretations and the pathologizing of culturally rooted practices (e.g., ancestor communication).
4. Reflect on ethical bracketing as a clinical skill that allows practitioners to hold space for difference without imposing dominant interpretations.
5. Deconstruct power-laden clinical language (e.g., “client,” “helping,” “non-compliant”) and practice re-authoring case notes using Ubuntu-centred language that affirms dignity, story, and self-determination.
