Educational Determinants of Readiness to Practise with LGBTQ Clients: Social Work Students Speak Out

utoronto.ca As health and mental health providers are increasingly called to attend to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) issues, it is critical for social work education to ensure the competency of students to deliver services to these populations. This North American online study investigated the self-assessed readiness of LGBTQ undergraduate and master’s-level social work students (n 1,018) to practise with LGBT clients, as well as their assessment of their non-LGBTQ peers. Participants were enrolled in Master of Social Work (MSW) (76.0 per cent) or Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) (24.0 per cent) pro-grammes, representing 136 schools in fifty-two states/provinces. Students reported fairly low levels of self-assessed practise readiness with specific subpopulations (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender), with participants reporting the highest (somewhat pre-pared) self-assessed readiness with gay populations and the lowest (not well prepared) self-assessed readiness with transgender populations. Regression analyses were con-ductedseparately foreachsubpopulationandrevealedthatacrossallgroupshigher readi