Creating Cultural Safety in Couple and Family Therapy

This important resource offers theoretical and practical approaches to understanding and working with cultural realities in training and supervision, particularly in family therapy. Clinical wisdom, empirical findings, real-world examples, and hands-on suggestions demonstrate the vital role of building and sustaining cultural awareness, both in supervisory work with trainees and in therapists providing fair, effective, and relevant services to clients. In the book's multiple perspectives on the complexities of cultural identity, the attainment of cultural safety is shown as an ongoing process, part of professional development as well as self-knowledge across the lifespan. Critical distinctions are also drawn between cultural safety and relatively static concepts within cross-cultural competencies.

 Included in the coverage:

  • A framework for integrating an understanding of oppression dynamics in clinical work and supervision.
  • Expanding conversations about cultural responsiveness in supervision.
  • When dominant culture values meet diverse clinical settings: perspectives from an African American supervisor.
  • Safety and social justice in the supervisory relationship.
  • Towards safe and equitable relationships: sociocultural attunement in supervision.
  • Comprehensive multicultural curriculum: self-awareness as process.        
  • Developing cultural awareness and sensitivity through simulation.

Creating Cultural Safety in Couple and Family Therapy will enhance the work of social workers, mental health professionals, and practitioners working family therapy cases seeking perspectives on addressing diverse multicultural realities as they intersect with clinical supervision and training.



Robert Allan, PhD, LMFT, LPC is an Assistant Professor in the couple and family track of the graduate counseling program at the University of Colorado Denver. He maintains an active clinical and supervisory practice and is an AAMFT and ICEEFT approved supervisor. His research interests include supervision, therapist learning and development, and attachment-based therapy approaches. He has published and presented on these topics and serves on the editorial board of two different research journals.


Shruti Singh Poulsen, Ph.D., LMFT is a scholar and clinician as well as an AAMFT Approved Supervisor whose work focuses on cross-cultural responsiveness in systemic clinical work and supervising and training culturally responsive and competent clinicians. She has published and presented extensively on topics related to the critical impact of culture and context on diverse client populations; these issues have included interracial relationships and families, immigration and its impact on couples and families, cultural contexts and evidence-based systemic practices, and impact of culture on clinical supervision. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy and the Journal of Couple and Relational Therapy. Her most recent cross-cultural experience of clinical work and supervision is in Istanbul, Turkey at Özyegin University, as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, teaching and training in a newly-formed Couple and Family Therapy program.