Abstract
Julie Fish provides an accessible and appealing work to practitioners and students who want to deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) service users in an appropriate way. If anyone, (still) hesitates to see the importance of the LGBT issue in social work, Fish’s chain of reasoning is convincing, pragmatic and straightforward: ‘As . . . social work is based on the concepts and assumptions of heterosexuality’ (p. 7), and LGBT service users are hidden, resulting in a lack of information about LGBT people’s needs, ‘social-service [. . .] providers may not offer appropriate care’ (p. 2) or ‘[. . .] the same standard of service [. . .]’ (p. 3). This situation can only be altered through professional reflection and further inquiry into the specific needs of LGBT service users.
To establish a clear point of departure, Fish delivers an inventory of currently significant conceptual groundwork, such as: definitions of sexuality and sexual orientation, heterosexism, LGBT people and human rights, the UK-legislative context and theoretical perspectives in social work with LGBT people. She connects the ‘requirement to consider sexual orientation in social work’ (p. 15) to the code of ethics for social workers and the framework of the UK National Occupational Standards for Social Work and discusses common clichés and misunderstandings of the issue. On that basis, she uses enquiry-based-learning (EBL) to examine different cases in various areas of social work, always starting from a ‘Practice Scenario’ and includes children, and young people, older people, mental health, disability, substance misuse and asylum seekers. The value of Fish’s book is not restricted to the first reading: the technique of EBL can be used equally effectively by small student learning-groups, or by social workers, collaboratively with their LGBT clients. It includes: understanding the scenarios (or the practical problem), the identification of possible resources, the analysis of the available information, the application of relevant social work theories or methods, the identification of alternative courses of action and the presentation of the research findings. EBL is a solution-focused approach which is especially useful in this area of social work where almost no recent research has been done. This assumes that the US context, where the issue has been researched, is not applicable for Europe. In this book, Fish includes a glossary and also an appendix with key questions to defined topics and subsequent exercises, creating a practical ‘workbook’ for students.
As expressed in the title, Fish wants to ‘make a difference’ and bring about change. Perhaps for the same sex couple who cannot have a shared room in a residential care home because others might feel uncomfortable or offended, or for the trans-woman in a psychiatric hospital who cannot shave her beard because no one recognizes how uncomfortable she feels about it, or for the asylum seeker who must openly admit to being gay (as the reason for his/her application thus) losing the right to privacy, and possibly losing any remnants of sympathy or understanding of the social worker in front of him or her.
Throughout this work, Fish provides a compilation of theoretical building blocks intended to promote further reflection and enough curiosity hopefully to inspire social workers, other practitioners and students to acquire a more in-depth comprehension of theoretical work on the LGBT issue.