Multicultural counselling competencies of counsellors in Singapore

Abstract

Multicultural counselling competencies affect the counsellor’s ability to effectively work with clients of a different ethnicity. A counsellor’s multicultural counselling competency is an important aspect of counselling that requires more emphasis in multicultural Singapore. There are several variables that affect a counsellor’s multicultural counselling competency. Various studies conducted mainly in the U.S. have found that counsellors’ multicultural counselling training, ethnic grouping, ethnic identity and multicultural supervision are related to their multicultural counselling competencies. The present study sought to find out if these variables predicted multicultural counselling competencies of Singapore counsellors. Singapore counsellors were invited to complete a questionnaire that contained measures that measured the predictor and criterion variables. Multiple regression analyses of the data revealed that multicultural counselling training significantly predicts the counsellor’s multicultural counselling knowledge, and the counsellor’s ethnic grouping significantly predicts multicultural counselling awareness, knowledge and skills. Ethnic identity was also found to significantly account for the variance in a counsellor’s multicultural knowledge and skills. Multicultural counselling experience was found to account for variance in multicultural counselling knowledge. Multicultural counselling supervision did not significantly account for variance in any competency. These results show that multicultural counselling training is an important aspect in a counsellor’s training. Implications for counsellor training in Singapore are discussed.