This section commences with a brief discussion regarding the importance of team working within youth work contexts; the focus then moves to how respondents were able to be open, or not, regarding their sexuality with their colleagues and managers. This is followed by discussions of the particular challenges faced by respondents and unsupportive situations that respondents recounted.
It is often assumed that youth workers work alongside supportive colleagues and supportive partner agencies (Young; 2006; Batsleer, 2008; LLUK, 2008; Coburn, 2011; Sercombe, 2010a; Sapin, 2013) as they seek to develop relationships with young people. Support in youth work settings is used here to mean that workers ‘provide learning opportunities for colleagues’ (LLUK, 2008, p13) and that they feel confident in discussing their challenges as well as their celebrations of practice with peers (Batsleer, 2008). Working with supportive colleagues is useful in the ‘process of location of self’ (Sapin, 2013, p67) and can assist workers to develop confidence regarding how they work and how they portray their self within their work setting (Batsleer, 2008).
Seven respondents talked generally about the importance of team working. Ellie spoke of people within her LGBT focussed organisation being ‘critical of one another in a supportive and loving
way ... [where a critical approach to practice with young people] is nurtured and challenged … so that you’re continually kept on your toes and you don’t get too settled in your work’. Ellie’s words
mirror ideas in the literature which suggest that discussions with colleagues can support careful reflection and so improve practice in difficult situations (Sercombe, 2010a). Issie talked about the ease of working with colleagues who knew where her boundaries were in terms of what information she would be willing to share with young people regarding her home life and LGBQ sexuality. This suggests that Batsleer is correct in saying that ‘sensitivity is developed in teams of workers who discuss and debate issues’ (Batsleer, 2008, p89).
In terms of sharing information with colleagues, fourteen (of the fifteen) respondents said that they were open about their LGBQ sexuality with their managers and colleagues. This is in contrast to only one quarter of all workers being out to their colleagues (Stonewall, 2008c). Liz spoke about her ‘new gay boss ... [who was supportive in her] decision to be out with young people’. Interestingly Gaby, the only respondent who had not wanted to be out as gay to her colleagues, was ‘relieved’ to discover that most of her colleagues did know that she was gay. This meant that
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she no longer had to be careful how she chatted with her colleagues about her partner and social life.
Working in more than one setting or role brought into focus the importance of context in terms of team support. Beth noted that when she was working in her role within a Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) project she did not make her LGBQ sexuality clear with colleagues, as she thought that she ‘may not be taken as seriously’ by these professionals. Beth felt that they would see her LGBQ sexuality as an impediment to her support for young people who are at risk of CSE. This is supported by other research which suggests that colleagues may be critical of the impact of a professional’s LGBQ identity on service users (Ward & Winstanley, 2005). This was in clear contrast with Beth’s openness regarding her LGBQ sexuality, both with colleagues and young people, when working in her role within a LGBT focussed youth work project. Fern also reported very different experiences in her two half time roles. She found supportive colleagues in the LGBT youth work agency but in the other mainstream youth work agency she felt very isolated. There she was the only LGBT-identifying member of staff and felt unable to even ‘share stories of my
marriage [with colleagues] as it was such a small event and very particular: not much in common with other people and their weddings’.
The range of youth and community work contexts that respondents worked in highlighted the challenges of finding support from colleagues and sharing personal information with colleagues. A lack of support from colleagues was noted by Patricia who, despite decades of experience, had chosen to down-grade from a management role to work at grassroots level with young people. Patricia noted that teamwork was essential when working with young people with very challenging behaviour but that there was now no space for team building or team working. This was problematic for her and other full time colleagues who had to work with volunteers who often did not abide by professional youth work values. Patricia pointed out that there had never been any LGBT-awareness training in her local authority youth service. Patricia also noted, with sadness and tears, that when the Youth service was reorganised into cross-professional locality- based teams, her new manager, who was not from a youth work background, continually talked about ‘BLT’ despite Patricia’s repetition of the initials LGBT. Patricia said that she had ‘stepped
back’ into the era of non-acceptance of LGBT issues in their ‘straight world’. This lack of sharing
of core values made the ‘need to be accountable to … colleagues’ (as noted by the NYA, 2001, p4) very difficult for practitioners.
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Rosie’s story regarding support from colleagues offers a very different perspective and provides a challenge to people who aim to be supportive of LGBQ workers. When Rosie had worked in a care setting, some decades previously, she was not out as lesbian with colleagues in this ‘very
straight white environment even though young people were from very diverse backgrounds. ... staff were homophobic ... sexist ... racist’. Rosie then landed ‘the job of my dreams’ in a youth
work project using the outdoors with young people where she knew there were many LGBQ staff. Rosie, who presented as femme, was told when first offered the job that it was ‘great to have a
straight woman on the team’. She was surprised as she had not been asked about her LGBQ
sexuality at interview and she was clear at this point that she was a ‘dyke [but] I was ... [instructed to be] the pretend straight person in the team... to the outside world’ as the project did not want to be seen as an all-LGBQ staff team. This point is supported by other research which indicates that being seen as overly gay friendly may not be good for business (Colgan et al, 2007). As Rosie says: ‘I got the short straw ... I would have been very comfortably out ... but I was actually more in [there] than anywhere else [I had worked]. ... A lot of young people would assume that I was
straight and other staff were lesbian. ... It was the organisation’s choice ... not mine’. For Rosie,
despite the fact that she was ‘very comfortable’ in this setting she was not able to develop ‘as a
youth worker’ due to having to pretend to outsiders and many young people that she was straight.
Rosie’s femme image, which led to her often being seen as heterosexual rather than gay, is discussed in more depth below (8.3.1).
Despite the fact that most respondents wanted to be open about their home life and LGBQ sexuality with colleagues (a point supported by other literature: Colgan et al, 2007), some respondents had not found support over the years from colleagues or managers around issues to do with their LGBQ sexuality. This lack of support and understanding of LGBT issues by colleagues and managers was a recurrent theme for Helena who had worked in LGBT youth work for many decades. Helena identified three ‘very stressful’ times in her life that had been caused by the homophobia of work colleagues, managers or people that she worked closely with in other agencies. The first of these ‘very stressful times’ was when Helena worked for a local authority youth service in the north of England in the early 1990s, when Section 28 of the 1988 local government Act (DfE, 1988) was new on the statute books. Her supervisor, on finding out that she was running a youth group for lesbian young people, asked her if as ‘a lesbian ... [she should]
be working with young lesbians?’ He insisted that she attended weekly supervision with him about
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had to stop the youth group we were running … because I was not going to work under those circumstances, ... having to go ... for supervision, being supervised by a homophobic ... youth officer, I couldn’t do it so I just withdrew’. Helena’s second ‘very stressful’ incident in youth work
was when a member of staff from another voluntary, not-for-profit agency, accused her publicly of not providing professional support to a young woman who eventually committed suicide. This was a young woman that Helena worked closely with. Helena believed that the other agency (who had also worked with the young woman) had given the young woman very poor advice: ‘to come
out to her family’. This incident impacted on the funding that Helena’s LGBT youth group received
from the local authority. The third incident is too recent and too painful to be shared publicly. These experiences of repeatedly being knocked down and undermined by colleagues and partner agencies was a heavy pain that Helena had carried into her retirement.
Marie, like Helena, a youth worker with years of experiences, reported that she had ‘always been
out’ with her youth work colleagues about her lesbian identity (she had worked within the same
Local Authority for eighteen years). However since the reorganisation of the Youth service into locality based inter-professional teams Marie was, for half of her work time, based in a police station. Marie noted that most of her police colleagues were not aware of her lesbian identity, not because she did not trust them as individuals but because she did not trust the institution of the police. Marie was particularly unhappy about discussing her LGBQ sexuality with the senior police officer. This was sometimes problematic for Marie, for example, when she returned from an extended sick leave due to the death of her ex-partner and mother of her three children. Thus, at this difficult time, Marie was unable to share with her colleagues the stresses that she was facing in her personal life. Marie talked about the fact that her own history included being on ‘picket lines and on marches. So I've … found it quite difficult being [based] in the police station’. For Marie the disconnect regarding her own values and the values of her colleagues at the police station was very testing; a point also discussed in other research (Colgan et al 2007).
Amy, a younger and more recently qualified youth worker, had also encountered a lack of support from some colleagues. Amy noted that in two different settings where she worked she was told not to be out as LGBQ with the young people (as discussed above:7.4.3) as it was thought that this would have been a barrier to her developing useful relationships with the young people and their parents. Amy disagreed with this guidance and consequently ignored it. She recounted a situation where homophobic comments were being made by young people: ‘I just said “well I’m
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gay” and … [the young people] went “oh right” and continued what they were doing without the homophobic comments’. This demonstrated that sometimes colleagues and managers were
unjustifiably fearful of young people’s reaction to LGBQ issues. Amy also reported how one colleague did not believe that she was gay. This colleague was older, and a part time youth worker, who might not have had the more open attitude to LGBT people that has begun to exist in British society (see National Centre for Social Research (NCSR), 2017). He stated his surprise and disbelief regarding Amy’s LGBQ sexuality when Amy challenged his assumption that a young woman, that Amy knew to be a young lesbian, should go and find a boyfriend.
It is clear from these findings that different women youth workers had a range of experiences of support, or not, from their colleagues and this impacted on their own self-esteem and confidence within their work and setting, as affirmed by the literature (Sapin, 2013). These findings reflect the importance of being out to colleagues before being out to young people about issues to do with their LGBQ sexuality (see Batsleer, 1996a). It would be good to think that the lack of support from colleagues that Helena had encountered was a thing of the past in youth work settings but the more recent challenging experience reported by Amy, Fern and Patricia suggests otherwise. In some settings where youth workers are working in cross-professional teams, it seems that support from colleagues for LGBQ workers is now a rarer commodity than in the past: a worrying trend. This goes against the suggested change in attitudes towards homosexuality noted in the literature (Rotheram-Borus and Langabeer, 2001 cited in NCSR, 2017) and the developing LGBQ friendly legislation.
This section has provided evidence that supportive team working was experienced by some of these youth workers but many more had experienced challenges and difficulties with regard to a lack of support or understanding from close colleagues and managers over the years. Some of these challenges were linked to the changes within youth work which will be explored in Ch.9.