The Practical Application of Sexual Literacy to Social Work

The social work literature has experienced a dramatic and increasingly widespread interest in human sexuality. “Basic understanding of human sexuality…is a necessary part of the professional education of the social worker,” (Abramowitz, 1971, p. 353-354).  Scholars have argued that sexually literate social workers are essential to quality client services (Bywater & Jones, 2007; Dunk-West & Hafford-Letchfield, 2011; Myers & Milner, 2007; McCave, Shepherd, & Ramseyer-Winter, 2014).  Sexually literate social workers are also critical to ensuring the healthy sexual development of youth. Yet, many social workers did not receive any formal training in their academic programs (Gochros, 1974) and are unsure of where to pursue training.  Sexual health disparities are also well documented; yet, the academy is inconsistent in addressing the sexual literacy of social workers. Additionally, social workers struggle to accept sexuality as a legitimate ethos for research, practice, and teaching, contributing to the gap between social work competency and practice needs.

This roundtable session will begin a dialogue about social work sexual literacy. Presenters will discuss the relevance of human sexuality to social work competency, highlight our historical roots within this topic, and illuminate how human sexuality is situated within a myriad of practice areas at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Using three topical areas: queer microaggressions in social work, the intersection of disability and sexuality and finally, sexuality training, presenters will highlight the importance of these topics as they relate to the practical application of sexual literacy within social work research, practice, and education. Presenters will also address the conference theme, ensuring healthy development of all youth, by elucidating how marginalized youth, specifically youth with intellectual disabilities and queer youth, are at increased risks when the full spectrum of their identity is not addressed.

Our goal is to stimulate conversation that will situate the discussion of human sexuality firmly within social work practice, promote understanding of the saliency of sexual literacy of social workers, stimulate practice and education approaches, and provide examples of emerging scholarship on human sexuality and social work research. A social justice lens will be utilized to highlight that sexual justice is a social work issue.

The following objectives will be met: 1) participants will be able to identify queer microaggressions that impact competence for social work practice and education, 2) participants will evaluate their competency around disability and sexuality, and 3) participants will be able to describe the importance of situating sexual literacy within social work. We will address each of the topics above in a prepared statement and then we will take audience questions and lead a discussion. Depending on the number of participants and the interests of participants, break out groups will be considered to allow participants the opportunity to discuss subtopics in more depth before sharing major discussion points with the larger group.