“You are the first gay person whom I have ever met that appears to be happy about who you are,” said a graduate social work student to me over two decades ago. She meant it as a compliment, but it made me sad that she thought all gay people were unhappy. “How many gay people do you know?” I asked in response to her comment. “Oh, you’re the first,” said she. I felt even worse. Even though this student had been exposed to one openly gay man, who happened to be her research professor, I could not help but ask myself how well she was being prepared to practice with lesbians, gay men (not to mention bisexual or transgender people) in her field placement and in her course work. The answer, I knew, was that she was not being prepared at all. She had no courses that expanded her knowledge about the needs of LGBT people; she had few, if any, readings assigned that addressed this content; and apart from her one experience with her openly gay professor, she had no practice experiences in her professional training. It seemed woefully insufficient and somehow unethical to permit a student to graduate without any knowledge about the needs of this population. How were students, who would undoubtedly encounter LGBT people in their professional lives, supposed to know how to practice with them? Unquestionably there was a need to address these issues with graduate students preparing for practice in a diverse world. Apart from its significance as a practice dilemma, this experience also illustrates an important truth about LGBT people in contemporary society: that most people have little or no accurate knowledge about the lives of this population. Fortunately, in the past two decades years, there have been some changes in preparing MSW students for practice with LGBT populations. Not, enough, I believe, but there have been improvements nonetheless.
An ecological approach
The person:environment1 perspective (Carter, 2013; Germain, 1991), utilized throughout this text as a framework for practice, has been a central influence on the profession’s theoretical base and has usefulness and relevance as an approach to social work practice with LGBT people. Germain and Gitterman (2008) underscore the point that disempowerment, which threatens the health, social well-being, and life of those who are oppressed, imposes enormous adaptive tasks on LGBT people. An understanding of the destructive relationships that exist between LGBT people and a predominantly heterocentric environment is integral to the process of developing practice knowledge about working with LGBT people as clients. The purpose of this chapter, then, is to define and describe the knowledge base of practice with LGBT people and to review social work’s response to the needs of this population.
What the social worker is supposed to do should dictate the boundaries of the profession’s knowledge base, noted Germain (2013). If social workers are supposed to be able to work with lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people, then a knowledge base for practice with them must be within those boundaries. An organized knowledge base is crucial to any profession. Anyone, notes Mattaini (2002, p. 6) “can act.” The professional, however, is expected to act deliberately, taking the steps that are likely to be most helpful, least intrusive, and most consistent with the person’s welfare. Making a conscious determination about those choices requires an extensive knowledge base.
Sources of knowledge
In his chapter focusing on the acquisition of knowledge for foundation practice, Mattaini (2002) identifies several key sources of knowledge that, in a modified version herein, provide a framework for this chapter’s discussion on knowledge for practice with LGBT people. Sources identified by Mattaini include: (1) practice wisdom derived from narrative experiences of the profession and professional colleagues; (2) the personal experiences of the practitioner; (3) a knowledge of the professional literature; (4) a knowledge of history and current events; (5) research issues that inform practice (both qualitative and quantitative); (6) theoretical and conceptual analyses; and (7) information that is provided by the case itself. All of these, understood within an ecological framework of person:environment, with a consciousness of the reality of oppression in the lives of LGBT people, are called upon to inform social work practice with LGBT people, and each source contributes to the development of the knowledge base of practice with this population.
Practice wisdom can be viewed as that which is derived from the narrative experiences of the profession, from both professional colleagues and from clients. Interest in narrative theory has grown in recent years, and the use of life stories in practice has in some organizations replaced elaborate, formalized intake histories. Life stories, which tend to be rich in detail, are usually obtained early in the work with a client and can be a useful means toward not only gathering important data to enhance one’s knowledge base, but useful also in establishing a rapport and a trusting relationship with a gay or lesbian client. As the client tells and the worker listens empathically – that is, in the telling and the listening – the story gains personal and cultural meanings. This process, particularly with LGBT people who may have experienced oppression and marginalization, can be a healing process. It is, as Germain and Gitterman (2008, p. 145) put it, “our human way of finding meaning in life events, of explaining our life experience to ourselves and others, so that we can move on.”
Over the years, several notable social work practitioners (Beemyn, 2013; Gurman, Lebow, & Snyder, 2015; Hartman, 2000; Payne, 2014; Shernoff, 2013; Weston, 2013; White & Epston, 1990) have provided excellent examples of the use of personal narrative as a means to enhance local knowledge that can guide practice. Quesada, Gomez, and Vidal-Ortiz’s (2015) work – Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latino/a LGBT Activism, is one almost-perfect example of the power that personal narrative has to inform practice.
In addition to listening to the life stories of clients and the practice experiences of practitioners, social workers practicing with LGBT people can rely on rules that have been handed down by experienced practitioners. Heuristic practice, which can be described as principles to guide patterns of professional behavior and which has shaped and refined practice, may also serve as a model for other workers. The acquisition of group-specific language to guide practice, and a knowledge of the myths and stereo-types about LGBT people can be extremely useful forms of heuristic practice. A glossary of terms and several of the most common myths about lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and transgender people can be found in the Appendix to this text. These fragments of practice wisdom can be valuable as a guide for practitioners interested in enhancing their practice knowledge base in working with LGBT people.
Personal experience
The personal experiences of practitioners is the second powerful force that guides knowledge development. Social workers are guided not only by their own personal experiences but also by a professional code of ethics (see McCartt Hess’ chapter on values and ethics in this text). Most social workers base some of their knowledge about clients on integrated and synthesized events gathered from their own life experiences. Within the guidelines provided by the profession’s code of ethics, basic interpersonal and problem-solving skills that social workers have developed throughout their lives are important means toward informing their practices.
It is a myth that most people do not know anyone who is gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender. Unquestionably, social workers who have a close friend or a family member who is openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender may have additional personal experiences that can assist them in guiding their practice with these populations. Additionally, social workers who are themselves lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender will without doubt have additional insights into LGBT clients. However, being a gay man or a lesbian or a bisexual or transgender person alone does not provide a practitioner with a complete and full knowledge for practice with LGBT clients. Individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender may be at various stages of their own sexual or gender identity development, and their knowledge may be, at best, incomplete.
Issues of self-disclosure become significant when a social worker has had personal experiences or shares something in common with a client, in this case an LGBT identity. A gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender practitioner may find it helpful to disclose their orientation with a client who is struggling with whether or not to come out; but in other cases, the worker’s disclosure could inhibit the client from sharing genuine feelings (Dentato, Craig, Lloyd, Kelly, Wright, & Austin, 2016; Greene & Spivey, 2016; Haldeman, 2012; Inch, 2016; Messinger, 2004; Morrow & Messinger, 2006; Satterley, 2006). Although self-disclosure can be useful in many cases (Dentato, Craig, Messinger, Lloyd, & McInroy, 2014; Porter, Hulbert-Williams, & Chadwick, 2015), and while practitioners are using self-disclosure more than they did in the past, social workers need, at a minimum, close supervision and consultation to process these issues. Although personal experiences are key in knowledge development, social workers should always be in touch with their own feelings (Greene & Kropf, 2011) and should remember that self-disclosure always has to do with the well-being of the client, not the practitioner.
History and current events
Since practice is embedded in the broader social context of life, a working knowledge of the social policies and shifting social forces is important for knowledge development and working with LGBT people. The media is an important source of information since historical events are most often documented in newspapers, televised news reports, and weekly and monthly magazines. Television talk shows and news journals are often less than objective, and in many cases replete with inaccuracies; however, for some, these are the only sources of knowledge about LGBT people and an important basis to work from, even in a professional context.
Media attention has thrust a variety of LGBT issues out of the closet and into the homes of millions of people. Issues as varied as gay and lesbian marriage (Cooperman, 2004; Franklin, 2014; Gauntlett, 2008); transgender experiences (Whittle, Turner, Al-Alami, Rundall, & Thom, 2007); bisexual teens (Morris, 2006); same-gender parental adoptions (Lipkin, 2016); gay and lesbian partnership (DeNardis & Hackl, 2016; Gross, 2012); benefits for same-sex partners (Pinello, 2016); gay and lesbian parents (Blackwell, Hardy, Ammari, Veinot, Lampe, & Schoenebeck, 2016; Gross, 2012); the struggle for civil rights (Goodwin & Jasper, 2014; Guo & Saxton, 2013; Saxton & Wang, 2013) or the restriction of LGBT rights (Gross, 2012; Rodriguez, 2016); the anatomical idiosyncrasies of brains in gay men (Angier, 1991a, 1991b, 1992, 1993; Kraus, 2012; Poeppl, Langguth, Rupprecht, Laird, & Eickhoff, 2016; Sylva, Safron, Rosenthal, Reber, Parrish, & Bailey 2013); the collective power of lesbians (Corrigan, Kosyluk, & Rüsch, 2013; DeBlaere, Brewster, Bertsch, DeCarlo, Kegel, & Presseau, 2013); LGBT content in school curriculums (Harbeck, 2014; Kosciw, Palmer, Kull, & Greytak, 2013; Sequeira, Chakraborti, & Panunti, 2012); gays and the Boy Scouts (Eckholm, 2013); the first gay comic book character (Palmer-Mehta & Hay, 2005); and the movement to end the ban on gays and lesbians in the military (Johnson, Rosenstein, Buhrke, & Haldeman, 2015; Parco & Levy, 2016; Tilden, 2015). It seems that after years of being relegated to a whisper, the issues confronting LGBT people are now ostensibly being dealt with by the media in more open and visible ways.
The internet has provided, more than any other avenue, very important sources of information about LGBT people and at the same time has permitted those people at early stages of disclosure of an LGBT identity to explore their sexual and gender identity in a private and anonymous manner within the confines of their own homes. The information superhighway has not only grown exponentially during the past two decades (even since the first and second editions of this book), but the internet, for many, may be the first place to begin a search about the plethora of issues pertaining to LGBT people. Although there are also inaccuracies on the internet, one huge benefit for those seeking access to knowledge about LGBT people is that the Web has a reach that exceeds geography. Consequently, people in remote rural areas, as well as those in more urban centers, potentially have equal access to information about and communication with LGBT people around the world, whereas in the past such data were only to be found in urban environs. Albeit one must have access to a computer to make such connections, libraries, schools, and internet cafes in many communities can provide individuals with such access.
A review of appropriate websites about LGBT people is beyond the scope of this publication, as there are literally hundreds of thousands – maybe more – t...
