Social Justice and Culturally Responsive Care
At All Things New Clinical Services, social justice is part of how we understand mental health and how we practice care. Emotional well-being does not develop in a vacuum. Racism, discrimination, access to resources, family and community expectations, faith and spirituality, gender, disability, military service, and other parts of a person’s lived context can influence stress, safety, relationships, and healing.
As a Black-owned, clinician-led practice, we have a particular commitment to Black adults who want therapy that recognizes culture and context. We understand that some Black clients have felt unseen, stereotyped, or expected to explain their experiences in health care settings. Our goal is to provide a space where those experiences can be explored with respect, curiosity, and care.
Adults of every racial and ethnic background are welcome. Our focus on Black mental health reflects our commitment to a community that has often encountered barriers to culturally responsive care. It does not limit who may seek services from our practice.
What Culturally Responsive Care Means Here
Culturally responsive therapy does not mean making assumptions about someone based on race or any other aspect of identity. It also does not require a client to share a therapist’s political, cultural, or religious beliefs.
Instead, we strive to:
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Listen before making assumptions.
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Recognize clients as the experts on their own identities and lived experiences.
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Ask how culture and context affect the concerns a client brings to therapy.
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Respect the importance—or nonimportance—a client places on race, faith, gender, military service, family, community, and other identities.
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Make treatment decisions collaboratively.
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Seek consultation or provide referrals when a client’s needs fall outside a clinician’s scope of practice or competence.
Power, Bias, and Accountability
Bias and racism can be conscious or unconscious. They can occur between individuals or through institutions and systems. Intent matters, and impact matters.
We work to examine both. This includes reflecting on our own assumptions, recognizing how power may operate in the therapeutic relationship, listening openly to feedback, responding with humility, and taking responsibility when repair is needed.
Our Commitments
Our approach includes the following commitments:
1. Ongoing Self-Reflection
We continually examine how our identities, experiences, assumptions, privileges, and biases may influence our clinical decisions and interactions with clients.
2. Shared Decision-Making
Therapy should be collaborative. We explain recommendations, invite questions, respect informed choices, and include clients in decisions about their goals and treatment.
3. Centering the Client’s Voice
We listen to and respect the experiences of people whose perspectives have historically been dismissed, minimized, or misunderstood. We do not expect one person to speak for an entire community.
4. Considering the Larger Context
When relevant to the client, we consider how relationships, workplaces, communities, institutions, social conditions, discrimination, and access to resources may affect emotional well-being.
5. Building on Strengths
Clients are more than their symptoms or difficult experiences. We recognize resilience, cultural knowledge, relationships, faith, values, survival skills, and other strengths that may support healing.
6. Supporting Self-Determination
Our role is not to tell clients what to believe or how to live. We help clients develop insight, skills, and practical strategies that support their goals, values, relationships, and desired changes.
Our Ongoing Responsibility
Cultural humility is an ongoing practice, not a finish line. We do not claim perfect knowledge or understanding. Our clinicians are responsible for continued learning, ethical practice, appropriate consultation, and accountability.
We work to provide individual therapy for adults in an environment where Black clients do not have to translate or defend their experiences—and where every client is treated with dignity, compassion, and respect.
Sources That Inform Our Approach American Counseling Association. Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies. https://www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/competencies/multicultural-and-social-justice-counseling-competencies.pdf American Psychological Association. The Impact of Discrimination. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2015/impact Dyer, J. T., and Gushwa, M. (2024). “DEIPAR Deeper: A Curricular Social Justice Framework and Culturally Responsive Evaluative Tool.” In J. T. Dyer and K. Flores-Carter (Eds.), Infusing Social Justice into Social Science Practice, pp. 53–65. Kendall Hunt Publishing. https://he.kendallhunt.com/product/infusing-social-justice-social-science-practice Goodman, L. A., Liang, B., Helms, J. E., Latta, R. E., Sparks, E., and Weintraub, S. R. (2004). “Training Counseling Psychologists as Social Justice Agents: Feminist and Multicultural Principles in Action.” The Counseling Psychologist, 32(6), 793–836. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000004268802 hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-to-Transgress-Education-as-the-Practice-of-Freedom/hooks/p/book/9780415908085 Ratts, M. J., Singh, A. A., Nassar-McMillan, S., Butler, S. K., and McCullough, J. R. (2016). “Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies: Guidelines for the Counseling Profession.” Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 44(1), 28–48. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmcd.12035