Table of Contents
Abstract:
LGBTQ+ will be the focal community (arena) that represents the target population that desires change in this paper. The LGBTQ+ Community has its distinguishable boundaries, historical context, subgroups, strengths, weaknesses, and needs. This paper identifies a community to which, as a student Social Worker belong to. Human rights refer to every person’s freedoms and entitlements to live in dignity. The paper shall discuss the applicability and actual practice of the human rights approach to human sexuality, as well as an examination of different arenas regarding the social issues that’s surrounding the LGBTQ+ Community by identifying who is targeted, who is impacted, by researching the data sources available, analyzing power, oppression, and privilege influence; lastly strategies that can be addressed.
Assignment 1:
Society is structured on how people experience life through its procedures, straight or indirectly. The human rights approach to human sexuality entails ensuring rights, and the government should be required to respect, protect and fulfill these basic human rights. A basic apprehension of societal issues helps learn how these affect us in our day to day life. Discoursing societal issues in the LGBTQ+ community can assist individuals in understanding different sociological constructs and positions of this population in society. The LGBTQ+ community is as evident as a means to constantly reform the areas of barriers, influence on public presentation, social care, criminal justice, among many others.
In researching for this paper, in 2016, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam had signed a bill that allowed for mental health counselors and therapists to refuse treatment to patients based on religious objections and/or personal beliefs. The measure of this law will make it harder for those within the community to gain access to counseling; particularly in certain areas of Tennessee where a religiously conservative therapist is common. As an optimistic person within the LGBTQ+ community, I feel with even a tremendous victory like, the right for marriage equality for us, a law like the “Therapist Bill” will only allow individuals to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ communities even further.
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Discrimination is personal to me as a Social Worker, the foundation of my education, experiences, and training has taught me to deal with personal biases in order to work with a client not sharing the same beliefs. Although the bill was passed into law in Tennessee it hasn’t migrated to any of the other states. Here in Florida, there is a program called Rainbow Counseling who has experience working with clients of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. Rainbow Counseling provides individual and relationship/couples counseling for those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, demisexual, and/or pansexual. The LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapist provides office-based counseling to LGBTQ+ clients locally in St. Petersburg, Florida, as well as online counseling to clients residing anywhere in Florida. Such programs would counteract the “Therapist Bill’ that was passed in Tennessee and would a positive shift towards change. The question to be asked is, how are the major issues and social problems in this community perceived? And, to what extent are these problems interconnected, and must some be solved before others can be addressed?
Assignment 2:
Studies examining the struggles faced by GLBT adolescents often cite how the difficulties they experience are manifested in their social environments (Davis, Saltzburg, & Locke, 2010). While reviewing the Needs Assessment in Table 6.1. there are four of the six methods that I would tap into to gather more information about basic human rights within the LGBTQ+ community, especially about the youth. The first method: Gathering Opinions and judgments from key informants by holding meetings such as community forums, public hearings, focus groups, and also face-to-face interaction. The person-in-environment view, a community which has to do with values, beliefs, problems to be faced, and resources available. This method has its strengths by providing an opportunity to hear directly from the targeted population, but it is often difficult for people to participate. The second method: Locating epidemiological studies is the act of analyzing data.
Understanding change in Economic structures and political environments, as a source of funding as well as citizens’ roles and expectations. This method has its strengths by providing data already collected and accessible, however, the analysis is usually restricted by the data that was previously collected. The third method: Finding studies of the incidence and prevalence of problems, which is reporting what previous studies have found. Understanding of the significant events in the history and development of welfare such as values, attitudes, and traditions, along with their significance in allowing change. This strength of this method are studies that have already been conducted and findings are available, which has the disadvantage as the generalizability of findings may be limited. Members of this community are the experts about the true availability of resources provided by different organizations. We must recognize invisible barriers and bridges that exist in a community, which is relative in closing or opening access to resources.
Assignment 3:
“An assets approach is congruent with a strengths perspective and reframes community development as an empowering process rather than as a problem that needs to be fixed. Focusing on problems, rather than assets, reinforces perceptions that community residents are disempowered and need outside experts, directs funding to services rather than residents, looks to resources outside the community to intervene, emphasizes a client rather than a citizen mentality, forces community leaders to denigrate their own communities, and deepens cycles of dependency” (Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, & Thomas, 2017). The other constituents of the LGBTQ+ community might determine assets as a sense of empowerment, this brings a voice to create the necessary change.
People outside of this community have struggled with understanding and accepting change, especially in the social environment which is a major aspect of the LGBTQ+ community. For the longest, LGBTQ+ persons have endured a denial of human rights such as healthcare, marriage equality, and adoption and family structure to name a few. Although the LGBTQ+ has crossed many hurdles, ignoring these demands, in add-on to further marginalizing a vulnerable population would only lead to obstacles ahead. The concept of intersectionality is to understand the aspect of the community in comparison to others. Often these aspects have a form of oppression, such as gender, race, age, and sexuality. An African American, woman, and lesbian like myself are three aspects to be oppressed by for example. It is vital for those in power to recognize the factors that coincide through the concept of intersectionality that contributes to the struggle that LGBTQ+ endure.
Assignment 4:
As a Social Worker, The Midwest Academy’s Strategy chart would be best practice to help determine the issues with the LGBTQ+ community. Macro-Level Social Work roles are fundamental to community building. Social Workers have an array of ways of working in the community. Much like the Midwest Academy’s Strategy chart, the social work role in macro practice determine goals, providing resources, strengths, being aware of invisible barriers and bridges that exist in a community, determining constituents, allies, and opponents, identifying the target population, provide tactics, and also conducts research, to achieve the social well-being of the community. This is necessary to facilitate better planning and evaluation to measure progress towards the achievement of the initial goal that goes beyond interventions.
The involvement of social worker in the LGBTQ+ community is client system, the population who benefit from the process change; the macro systems which include small groups, communities and/or organization; those who collaborate on tasks that move toward agreed-upon changes; the changed agent system involves who initiates the macro change process, and lastly; the action system are those people who accept to work together to attain the proposed change. There are three identified avenues involved in macro level change which refer to population, problem, and arena. The practice provides the focal points of the Social worker engaging in the change episode. Macro-level social work is a foundation that contributes to the development of theory, its number of practice approaches and operates within the boundaries of professional values and ethics.
