Abstract
This study sought to address some of the current gaps in social work research regarding transgender individuals through a community-needs assessment. This study focused on the Central Valley of California due to the geographical proximity and familiarity of the researcher, but also to capture the experiences of a less researched transgender population in California. Though the demographic statistics of the transgender population in the U.S. have shown significant systemic marginalization and oppression for the past decade, the amount of best practice recommendations for work with trans clients is limited, and the training regarding work with trans clients is also limited in social work education. Most best practice recommendations in the literature are for clinical and health-care settings only, and these recommendations had yet to be vetted by transgender individuals. One of the features of this study was to ask what kind of settings trans individuals had received social work services in to provide foundation for the argument that general curriculum and training should include work with transgender clients beyond of only clinical or health-care settings and not relegated to elective courses only. This study found that 35% of respondents who had received social work services indicated settings that were not health-care or clinical settings, such as homeless shelters and Social Security offices. Additionally, these results correlate with the marginalized experiences of transgender individuals that would lead to a higher likelihood of receiving social work services. This study also collected the most repeated recommendations in the literature and asked how respondents regarded them on a five-point scale. The average response across all the recommendations was “somewhat positive”, and the most highly regarded recommendation was, “For social workers to learn to recognize and be aware of transgender/nonbinary-specific trauma through a minority stress approach.” The least positively regarded recommendation also had the highest amount of neutral, “neither positive nor negative”, responses were, “For social workers to practice internal self-assessments regarding their personal beliefs of gender.” This recommendation being considered so neutrally by the respondents indicates a distrust in the benefit of self-assessment alone without something such as queer theory to challenge practitioner cisnormativity. Lastly, this survey included qualitative questions to allow transgender individuals themselves to speak to the needs of their population, and what training they wish social workers received before working with trans clients. Asking transgender individuals directly was an important component of this study, which followed the Intersectionality Research for Transgender Health Justice (IRTHJ) framework. The most recorded need of the transgender community that could be met or better met by social work was the need for practitioners to be educated on topics of gender and the variety of transgender experiences. The most recorded need among BIPOC and transfeminine identified respondents was for increased access to practical resources and trans-specific resources. Regarding the second qualitative question, respondents wished for social workers to be educated on transgender and nonbinary topics by transgender/nonbinary individuals themselves prior to working with trans clients. Of the respondents who specified the need for social workers to engage with the transgender community to gain the necessary experience needed to work with transgender clients, half of them were transfeminine identified; this indicates a distrust in general transgender training to include the experiences of transfeminine individuals.