By Dylan Deprey
When Christina Moreno had a sore throat, her mother would give her a concoction of honey, onions and garlic. Although taking a gulp of cough syrup would have coated her throat and tasted just as bad, her mother’s home remedy did the trick.
She mentioned another home remedy a woman’s mother swore by. She would make her children wear gauze dipped in pickle juice around her neck to alleviate the pain of a sore throat. Although it may sound strange, it worked.
Moreno has worked as a bilingual outreach specialist at the Penfield Children’s Center on Milwaukee’s North side. Since 1967, The Penfield Children’s Center has served around 1,700 children with developmental delays and disabilities.
Moreno used these personal stories as well as many others as examples during her webinar on cultural competence in regard to childhood development on April 11 at noon.
Defined by Moreno, Cultural Competence is the ability to understand people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds that may have different views that impact interactions with them.
“Keeping in mind there may be those situations you may not see on a regular day-to-day that may seem a little bit strange, but to them it is an everyday norm,” Moreno said.
Moreno gave a personal example of her time as a professional medical interpreter. She had worked at a clinic that primarily took care of women and children. Moreno was working with patients that had the male head of household making the decisions. In a situation where they couldn’t reach the father, they talked to the father-in-law because he was the next male head of household.
The nurses, who would have normally talked to the women and children being treated, had to accommodate to this cultural difference.
Moreno also noted that being culturally competent does not mean that one is supposed to learn every characteristic of every culture.
“It is not a realistic expectation to be able to know facts about cultures,” Moreno said. “It actually gives you a feeling of false competency because you feel that you know all this information.”
Moreno addressed the importance of being culturally competent in the realm of monitoring childhood development in educators and in the health care providers.
She noted that educators might reinforce stereotypes in the classroom when generalizing about different cultures without realizing it. This can occur through using inappropriate tools learned through false cultural competence.
Moreno also said that there is a higher chance of misdiagnoses or late diagnoses in children with delays in development mental disabilities.
“We recognize that early intervention is the key to promote the best possible developmental delays in children,” Moreno said.
She said that in the Autism spectrum, studies found that Latino children are diagnosed less often and at most, two and a half years later than other children.
She also noted another study showed that one in ten pediatricians were providing the appropriate developmental screenings in Spanish.
The pediatricians that were surveyed agreed it was harder to identify if there was a developmental disorder in Latino children.
Parents’ lack of knowledge in developmental milestones for their children was also a factor in the late or lack of diagnoses in children with mental disorders.
“Many time parents don’t know that development is promoted by exposure to different activities,” Moreno said.
Moreno said that honest communication with parents is the key to maintaining trust in both the medical and educational field. Parent’s emotions can range from relief in knowing that someone else cares for their child to fear of what will happen with their child.
“Developmental delays can be caused by disabilities, and we need to focus on the solutions, not the causes,” Moreno said.