{"id":495,"date":"2026-04-15T12:25:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T19:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/counsellingconcepts.ca\/decolonizing-health-healing-care\/?page_id=495"},"modified":"2026-04-17T14:10:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:10:29","slug":"pathway-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/counsellingconcepts.ca\/decolonizing-health-healing-care\/pathway-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Pathway 3 Cultural Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Decolonizing<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Chapter 3.0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pathway 3 Fostering Cultural Safety<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

By Melissa Jay, Sandra Collins, Jessie King, Amy Rubin, and Nubia Chong<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Book: Decolonizing Health, Healing, and Care<\/a>
Published: June 1, 2025
Publisher: Counselling Concepts<\/a>
Chapter DOI: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.71446\/sd86862525<\/a>
Book ISBN: 978-0-9738085-6-8
Format: ePub
Distributor: Vital Source<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Purchase your copy at<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Vital Source<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Abstract<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Culture is inseparable from health, healing, and care. It permeates every aspect of the counselling process. Pathway 3 focuses on fostering cultural safety by providing pathways for health and healing that honour and centre cultural diversity. The authors move away from attempting to guarantee safety to fostering safer or safe enough spaces for collaborative therapeutic work, recognizing the uniqueness of each individual and the impossibility of fully predicting what safety means for each person. This includes acknowledging the trauma and understandable distrust many clients carry with them as a result of their histories of systemic and cultural oppression within healthcare settings. Melissa, Sandra, and Jessie consider carefully how intersecting cultural identities, beliefs, and attitudes of both practitioners and clients shape health and healing relationships, cautioning against unintentional othering that may arise from ethnocentric and eurocentric practices. Co-creating a sense of cultural safety with clients is a powerful way to reduce the impact of health-limiting social determinants, which often lead to healthcare inequities. This pathway supports intentional attunement to clients\u2019 needs as a relational foundation for cultural safety and therapeutic work through three key practices introduced in the chapters that follow: cultural humility, ethical space, and respect for dignity. The authors underscore that the ultimate determination of safety and trust in therapeutic relationships lies with the clients themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa, Sandra, and Jessie are grateful for the offerings of these co-authors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n