Intercultural consultancy: One of the social sectors in which intercultural communication intensively takes place, is the sector of Services, including services offered by municipal institutions, institutions of social work, police force and health care.
The presence of relatively large numbers of clients originating from ethnic minorities may confront the experts in such agencies with assistance questions which differ to a certain degree from those posed by native clients. It is needless to say that the influence of culture on the presentation of problems or complaints and on the acceptance of the suggested solutions is very strong.
Daily practice shows that many experts in such institutions are not sufficiently equipped with the specific expertise needed in order to address such problems adequately. Frequently, docters, nurses, judges, lawyers,police, and other experts make use of interpreters to eliminate possible unequal treatment of ethnic minorities due to language differences. Unfortunately, other cultural factors, such as their non-verbal signals and their norms and values are hardly taken into account. Intercultural Mediation and Consultancy (IMC) offers help in analyzing and understanding and interpreting situations of cultural diversity.