Reflections on LGBT Students in Social Work Field Education

Abstract

Challenges Facing LGBT Students in Placement In trying to understand the issues currently facing LGBT social work students, it is important to attend to the larger context of social work education and the extent to which current social work programs address LGBT issues. A recent survey of program directors and faculty (Martin et al., 2009) found that several areas of the curriculum neglect important topics related to practice with LGBT populations. Best practices with respect to LGBT and questioning youth and their families seem notably deficient. Only 59% of social work faculty and program directors surveyed rated their students as prepared to work with LGBT clients, while 47% considered their students prepared to work with LGBT youth (p. 10). Despite this widespread perception of a lack of student and practitioner competency, only 19% of social work programs reported having assessment mechanisms in place to evaluate student competence to work with LGBT people (Martin et al., 2009, p. 10). One complicating factor for assessing student competence is that there is no accepted set of comprehensive standards for practice with LGBT populations, a dilemma to which I will return later in this article.We confront the challenge of educating students to work with LGBT populations amid a professional atmosphere of uncertainty and ambivalence. There is no way to estimate the number of LGBT students in social work programs; the Council on Social Work Education does not ask programs to collect these data and, as a result, few programs do. The needs and experiences of transgender students in field placements are almost completely invisible in the research literature (for an exceptional discussion of transgender issues in social work education, see the film Bad Fit , 2005). A select number of studies about gay, lesbian, and bisexual social work students' experiences in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have emerged over the last decade in social work (Chung, 2008; Daley, Newman, & Bogo, 2008; Diehm, 2004; Dooley, 2007; Fairclough, Bernard, Fletcher, & Ahmet, 2012; Hylton, 2005, 2006; Hunt, Cowan, & Chamberlain, 2007; Messinger, 2004, 2007; Newman, Daley, & Bogo, 2009). These studies identify a series of issues and concerns that arise for LGBT students in field, including:* obtaining information about the LGBT-friendliness of potential field agencies;* managing decisions about disclosure to supervisors, co-workers, and clients;* managing stresses of not disclosing sexual orientation or gender identity, if applicable;* handling colleagues' and clients' discomfort with the student's gender identity or sexual orientation;* managing conflicts regarding the student's self-presentation related to traditional gender norms;* dealing with assumptions of heterosexuality and gender normativity among agency staff and embedded in agency policies and practices;* working with homophobic or transphobic supervisors, staff, and clients;* dealing with personal issues that arise related to one's same-sex relationship;* managing inappropriate interactions with supervisors, co-workers, and clients;* creating and maintaining appropriate boundaries with LGBT clients;* addressing staff's discriminatory actions and attitudes related to LGBT clients; and* dealing with hate-based violence in the agency.The seriousness of these concerns is further complicated by field educators and field instructors who do not prepare LGBT students to address these issues with clients and colleagues, and who are themselves unprepared to respond to such issues when they arise. Michelle Topal and I raised many of these professional concerns in our Affilia article in 1997, making recommendations designed to help social work programs and agencies better serve these students. The next section will review these recommendations and the ways in which some social work programs and agencies have adopted these changes. …

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