Class takes cultural approach
Social work students studying ways to serve Vietnamese families
Mari Sapina-Kerkhove
Daily Staff Writer
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"To our understanding, (this course) is the first specific one in the state that specifically is designed to work with the Vietnamese population," said Allan Rawland, master's of social work program director.
He said the three-unit elective course was initiated as a response to the changing demographics in Santa Clara County, which has a Vietnamese population of 6 percent, according to Viet Mercury, a newspaper for the local Vietnamese community published by the San Jose Mercury News.
Rawland, former mental health director for Santa Clara County, said once the 5 percent threshold is crossed, culturally appropriate social service and mental health programs need to be developed to serve that population group.
Tuan Tran, a psychiatric social worker for Santa Clara County who has been selected to teach the class, said the main purpose of the class is to introduce students to the Vietnamese culture so that they can approach future clients in a culturally sensitive way.
"If we aim at cutting-edge quality of services for Vietnamese clients, then we need to address the cultural issues that are unique to the Vietnamese population," Tran said.
The opportunity to further familiarize themselves with the Vietnamese culture has attracted 11 students to the course, eight of them Vietnamese-American, Tran said.
"It's a new class, so I wanted to see what it's all about, and it's the first class that's devoted to Vietnamese-Americans," said Yen Le, a social work graduate student.
"I thought it might be interesting because we have a large Vietnamese population in San Jose," said Maria Delgado, a working professional and one of the three non-Vietnamese students in the class.
Now a probation officer for Monterey County, Delgado said she is taking the course to prepare for her intended transfer to Santa Clara County.
Many problems with Vietnamese clients result from cultural clashes between the Vietnamese and U.S. culture, Tran said. The acculturation process, he said, needs to be slow in order to be successful.
"If we want them to acculturate too quickly, when they are not ready, there's a lot of conflict. And we see a lot of conflict in child rearing and in child welfare, because the values in child rearing in the Vietnamese culture are different," Tran said.
For instance, corporal punishment of children is generally accepted in the Vietnamese culture as a way to discipline children. The practice is not as accepted in the United States, he said, so it's an area where social workers step in to tell Vietnamese clients about the difference in norms.
"The thing that I want to address (in my class) is the respect for the culture, for the differences, so that the students when they go out to work, they can feel that's OK," Tran said.
Quoc Ha, one of the Vietnamese-American students in the course, said it was recommended to him to take it to learn more about his own culture. He said he has learned a lot of things about Vietnamese history that he never knew before.
"The language barrier is the most difficult thing," he said. "(Also) the lack of resources, they don't know where to turn. There's a lack of trust in the system, with people that are not Vietnamese."
But according to Tran, there are advantages to non-Vietnamese social workers working with Vietnamese families.
"If you are non-Vietnamese, people will not blame you for cultural mistakes that you are going to make," he said. "It doesn't mean that you don't have to learn the differences in culture. If you learn it and show it, then people appreciate it more."
Tran said that Vietnamese clients oftentimes expect Vietnamese-American social workers to be completely familiar with the culture. For social workers who are second- or third-generation Vietnamese in the United States, he said, such an attitude poses a problem.
According to Rawland, this is one of the main reasons for the high number of Vietnamese-American students in the course.
"The high motivation is among Vietnamese students who want to learn more about their culture, because they are going to be hired and everybody is going to expect them to know everything about working with Vietnamese," he said.
Tran said that there is a big gap between some of his young Vietnamese students and Vietnamese immigrants.
"They are second or third generation, and somehow they are much more Americanized," he said. "They are at the end of the acculturation (process), and they work with their clients who are at the other end of the acculturation process."
Tran said he has been teaching the course mainly in English so far, partly because three of the students don't speak Vietnamese, but also because a lot of the social work and psychology jargon cannot be translated into Vietnamese.
According to Tran, it is also an important objective of the course to give students some basic Vietnamese language skills, such as the proper use of pronouns. This can make or break a relationship with future clients, he said.
"Because we are a hierarchical society, we use different pronouns when addressing different people," he said.
By not paying attention, a person trying to speak Vietnamese can end up saying "Hello, great-grandma" instead of "Hello, miss," which would be perceived as an insult, Tran said.
"That's the first thing you (say when you) open your mouth, and people can feel sympathy or can like you or dislike you," he said.
Several weeks into the semester, Delgado said she has come to understand the importance of cultural sensitivity as well as some of the main values within Vietnamese culture.
"I've learned a lot about the culture, that they're very family-oriented, they value the relationships that they have and honesty and loyalty," she said.
Aside from having different concepts about family structure, Tran said, Vietnamese immigrants in the United States often struggle with adjusting to an entirely different societal structure.
"One of the issues we need to help the clients understand is that this is a free society," he said. "Vietnamese are not (used to) a free society - we don't have complete freedom like here in America. And sometimes Vietnamese people think if something is not forbidden by the government, then it's OK."
While a bilingual Spanish-English course has been a part of the school's curriculum for years, the Vietnamese-English course is currently being offered on a trial basis, Rawland said.
At the end of the semester, he said, students will meet with the dean for an evaluation.
"We're giving it a shot," Rawland said. "We're probably going to set it up again next spring and then we'll see."
