Associate Professor Regis College Weston, Massachusetts, United States
Overview: This presentation reviews a recent study that assessed BSW students practice skills during a client simulation serving transgender children and their parents. Results indicated students experienced more challenges serving transgender clients than bisexual clients. Attendees will receive the results of this study and instructions to offer dyadic simulations.Proposal text: Introduction: Nineteen social work students participated in a dyadic simulation with transgender individuals and their cisgender parents, and they received lower performance scores compared to a similar group of students engaged in a simulation with bisexual child and parent dyads. This presentation reviews research findings with recommendations for simulation activities to better prepare novice social workers for direct practice with transgender children and parents.
CHILD AND PARENT: Transgender individuals can experience discrimination from parents (Kosciw et al., 2014). Rejection of gender identity by parents links with poor mental health outcomes for transgender individuals (Turban & Ehrensaft, 2018), yet few studies explore the parents’ experiences (Coolhart et al., 2018). Parents may experience a sense of loss after the transgender child’s disclosure (Coolhart et al., 2018). Some parents may experience uncertainty before they accept their child’s transgender identity (Gregor et al., 2015). Research is needed focused on preparing social work students to serve the needs of transgender children and their family members, especially their parents.
RESEARCH Methods: We conducted a one group descriptive study. Professional actors played the parts of a transgender individual and their cisgender parent. We recruited 19 junior level social work students to participate in this study. Evaluation involved five licensed social workers rating students’ performance by using the OSCE for Social Work Practice Performance Rating Scale (Bogo et al., 2014). Each rater scored students’ performance on 10-items according to a five-category rubric. We used four subscales representing how students develop and use a collaborative relationship, conduct an eco-systemic assessment, set the stage for collaborative goal setting, and demonstrate cultural competence.
RESEARCH Results: The 19 students completed the OSCE-SW study protocol. Total scores on the Performance Rating Scale ranged from 22 to 40 with a mean of 31.6 out of 50 possible points. Students in the transgender client simulation scored lower on the Performance Rating Scale compared to a similar cohort in a similar client simulation with bisexual children and cisgender parent dyads. We will share a full report of all study results during the presentation.
SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: Dyadic transgender-focused client simulations can benefit undergraduate and graduate social work education programs. Transgender issues remain largely absent from social work education, resulting in practitioners who are uninformed or biased towards transgender-specific concerns (Austin et al., 2016). Helping social work students develop skills to effectively serve transgender community members and their families may improve their ability to challenge binary-gender definitions in their practice (Burdge, 2007). Dyadic transgender client simulations prepare social work students to provide services with increased empathy for transgender children and their families.
Learning Objectives:
Study Overview – Attendees will learn about a recent study exploring university students’ experiences in a transgender child-parent dyadic client simulation opportunity.
Training Application – Attendees will learn challenges and strengths students manifested while serving the needs of one transgender child and their cisgender parent.
Education Enhancement – Attendees will learn to facilitate transgender child-parent simulations for students or counseling professionals to improve gender affirming services.