Farrah Nurul Nadia Bt Mael
0729504
Teaching cross cultural counseling to trainee counselors is a waste of time. Instead we should focus on equipping them with the skills and competence.

Counselors is a profession that required a person to be a good listener, helper, empathy with her client, have the sense of unconditional positive regards towards her client and also keep the client information as a private and confidential to others. In order to produce a good counselors, they should be trained in the right way where once they graduate, they have already acquired all those criteria that a counselor need to have. In Malaysia, a counselor have to have 4 year programme of counseling as a condition to be graduate and to become a counselor. So, in the 4 year study, they have been equipped with all skills and competence as a good a counselor. Despite of focusing on equipping them with those skills and competence, they need to be culturally competence too toward their client. They should be teach about the cross cultural counseling. To be culturally competence means that they have to learn about others culture. Multicultural; counseling means that when any counseling session occurs or any counseling relationship in which the counselor and the client belong to different cultural group. They need to understands about others race, religion and ethnicity. Ethnicity is a sense of identity that stems from common ancestry. It also about beliefs of every culture where they have different beliefs about God, world and life. Then, the multiculturalism refer to the social-intellectual movement that promotes the value of diversity and insists that all cultural groups be treated with respect and equal. The equality shows that a counselors promote the best service to all groups of people where they have some opportunity to talk about themselves, religion and belief when the counselors is really understands their culture and respect them a s human being without discriminate. By referring to the ACA codes of ethics, a nondiscrimination counselor do not condone or engage in discrimination based on age, color, culture, disability, ethnic group, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, marital status and economic status. The ACA also call upon counselors to respect differences. Respecting differences means that a counselors will actively attempt to understand the diverse cultural backgrounds of the clients with whom they work. The code of ethics in Malaysia also stated that a counselor have to maintain awareness and sensitivity about the meaning of confidentiality according to cultural groups. Counselor have to respect others point of view . They have to understand the complex role that cultural diversity plays in their work. They need to have culturally sensitivity that is not limited to one group, but it have to be applied to all cultures. A counselors may not afford to ignore the issues involved in counseling culturally diverse populations. For example, when a counselor receive or facing a client that comes from different culture from him, without any hesitate he has to accept them without condition. So, a counselor should know how to communicate with them, how to respect them and the most important thing is to study about them in order to have a smooth session with them. Counselor should be aware of the influence of cultural heritage on client’s experiences, attitudes, values and behaviors. They have to understand how race, culture and ethnicity may affect personality formation, vocational choices, help seeking behavior and the appropriateness or in appropriateness of counseling approaches. Instead of listening to their problem, build a good rapport with them , a counselor should assured that he has convincing his client to speak out by showing to them that he appreciate them as who he is regardless of the culture. But, what will happen if a counselor know nothing about his client’s culture? Definitely, the client would feel uncomfortable along the session and maybe he will refuse to talk. And maybe the client would not be sure and confident to talk with the counselor. So a trainee counselor should be taught about cross cultural counseling in order to trained them to be multiculturally competence. They really have to respect others too regardless of their race, religion and ethnicity. In conclusion, I’m strongly suggest that trainee counselor should be teach about cross cultural counseling instead of been equipped with the skills and competencies.