Social Workers' Attitudes to Lesbian Clients

Abstract

This paper has arisen from my dual perspective of being both a social worker and a lesbian feminist. From reading social work literature, I have become aware that ideas in early texts (Milligan, 1975; Davis, 1983) that lesbianism is a sickness are no longer apparent. Instead, a consideration of lesbian existence is noticeably absent within social work literature. Radical and feminist social work texts, (Dominelli and Mcleod, 1987; Hanmer and Statham, 1988; Langan and Lee, 1989) contain only fleeting references to lesbians. The only paper focusing solely on lesbians (Brown, 1992), provides an excellent critique of social work practice with lesbians, but offers little guidance for improving practice. Consequently, within British social work, there appears to be no theoretical model for working with lesbians. In the absence of theoretical guidance and in the name of equality, social workers may decide that 'a problem is a problem' and seek to use the same interven tions with all their clients. As a lesbian feminist, I am concerned that this approach fails to acknowledge the possibility that clients may be