J. Francisco Frias Ramirez, MSW

Juan Francisco holds a Masters in Social Work and has been practicing both individual and family therapy since 1998. He specializes in culturally appropriate counseling. As a bilingual, bicultural therapist in Spanish, he provides home-based family and individual therapy services to a diverse client population. His education and work history has focused on human development. Understanding these stages, which unfold in the physical, cognitive/language, and psychosocial domains, has been an important dynamic in his work. Juan Francisco works from a family systems perspective and uses a holistic view when conducting assessments and developing treatment plans.

For Juan Francisco, best practice means taking into consideration the:

• cultural identity of the client (e.g., degree of involvement with both the culture of origin and the host culture),
• cultural explanations of the client’s issues (e.g., idioms of distress or cultural interpretations),
• cultural factors related to the psychosocial environment including social support,
• cultural elements of the relationship between the client and the therapist (e.g., cultural and linguistic barriers between the therapist and client), and
• overall assessment for diagnostic care.

Through education and personal experience, Juan Francisco has learned that culture provides the environment in which behaviors are developed and expressed. Since behavior is learned in a social context, Juan Francisco has found that culturally appropriate counseling has been very important in recognizing the early influence of cultural learning on later development. He focuses on topics of cultural responsiveness such as:

• Issues of ethnic identity and acculturation,
• Identifying special communication styles and patterns,
• Definitions of gender roles and expectations,
• Family relationships and struggles around dependency,
• Coping with major losses such as death, divorce and relocation,
• Relating with the dominate society (schools, churches, community),
• Dealing with discrimination, prejudice, and more subtle forms of oppression.