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Cultural Competency has become a concept central to the professional practice of social work. It is endorsed because it is perceived that cultural competency of social work practitioners results in encounters with their clients that are more appropriate in manner, and more helpful in outcome. Originally a critique of failures of conventional practice, cultural competency has become so widespread that its meaning has become obscured. / This study examines the literature on Cultural Competency. It includes the preceding work on cross-cultural, multi-cultural and diversity literature. It examines definitions of culture in the context of competency and what is included and excluded; historical and regional development and its relationship to concepts such as ethnicity, race, class, identity and cultural indices. It also reviews what is considered best Social Work practice at this time and what problems can develop from this perspective.

In this study, two parallel themes will be explored. One is the counsellor's understanding of their own cultural identity and how this affects their practice with people of similar or different cultures than their own. Secondly, the study attempts to discover counselling skills that are most useful in working with members of the non-dominant culture. Data was collected from eight participants using two interview formats--a semi-structured interview guide and an unstructured interview design. Examination of this data yielded the following major themes: issues of counsellor's self identity, client's perceptions of counsellors, common practice issues, and cultural matching of counsellor and client. Important insights about counsellor's cultural self-identity and its relationship to practice were presented. No definitive cross-cultural practice skills were articulated, although many strategies for working with difference were addressed.

A connection is often drawn between the way the media represent ethnic minorities and the way majorities perceive them. This paper seeks to investigate further this link by drawing parallels between media portrayal of ethnic minorities in Bulgaria and the majority's attitude towards them. In addition it introduces the results of an online survey in which 250 people took part that directly studies the effects of negative media portrayal on the subject's attitude towards ethnic minorities in Bulgaria.

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The following thesis in library- and information science is a qualitative, comparative analysis of the relationship between the minority populations in Sweden and Finland and the library. The objective with the thesis is to investigate how the state is working to promote minority groups at the library and what lead to today’s situation. The investigation starts, as regards time, with the European charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which was published 1992 and ends with the establishment of the Swedish library law 2014. The method that is used will be a comparative analysis that aims to compare Sweden and Finland. The study is based on Edmund Dahlströms theories regarding ideologies and politics that have been ruling society’s social and legal framework for minorities. The analysis consists of one chapter where both comparison and conclusions are included. It’s discovered that Sweden and Finland have a similar legislation regarding minority languages, with the exception that Finland doesn’t have a universal legislation for the national minorities and therefore, to a degree, excludes the territorially boundless minorities. This is also the case in their library law. Sweden has in their new library law a paragraph where the national minorities are included. This despite the fact that Finland had a system for national minorities before Sweden, who started working towards that first until after the European charted had been decreed.

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