Understanding Hispanic Families: A Curriculum Outline∗

This article presents a curriculum outline designed to develop in clinicians basic knowledge about the dynamics of poverty, migration and class status of Hispanic Families. The training is oriented by an ecological point of view. It assumes that development of therapeutic attitudes and joining maneuvers on a case-by-case basis, through supervision, is not an efficient method of training family therapists to work with minorities. It suggests instead that courses, such as the one outlined, represent a more economical approach as they address the difficulties that many clinicians have in working with the whole class of poor and minority group families.