Social Work, Cultural Competence, and Practice with Internally Displaced Persons Across Nigerian Ethnic Boundaries

The ethnic and cultural diversity of Nigeria's internal displacement crisis requires social workers to practise across ethnic and linguistic boundaries in ways that demand theoretically grounded cross-cultural competence, yet no framework specifically addressing this challenge has been developed for the Nigerian context. This doctoral study develops and empirically validates a Cultural Competence Framework for social work practice with internally displaced persons across Nigerian ethnic boundaries, drawing on data from Borno, Adamawa, Benue, and Plateau States. A constructivist mixed-method paradigm employing framework development methodology underpins the study, combining Delphi consultation with 50 expert social workers and cultural community representatives, a survey of 200 IDP service users rating cultural competence dimensions, and 35 practitioner narrative interviews. Mixed-method framework validation procedures including convergent validity testing and cross-case analysis are applied. The study's original contribution is the Multiethnic Social Work Competence Framework, comprising 12 validated cultural competence domains specific to IDP service contexts across Nigeria's ethnically diverse displacement settings. This framework represents the first empirically validated cultural competence instrument developed for social work practice in the Nigerian context. Methodological contributions include the application of Delphi mixed-method framework development to social work research in low-resource settings. Keywords: cultural competence, internal displacement, social work, multiethnic practice, framework development