Vietnamese social work practitioners’ preparedness to practise with sexual minorities: Training and self-reported confidence

Abstract

Social workers must be prepared to work with all members of society given their commitment to social justice. This article reports the findings of a study examining the preparedness of Vietnamese social work practitioners to practise with sexual minorities. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, comprising a paper-based survey (N = 292) and semi-structured interviews (N = 12). The findings indicate that most practitioners felt ill-equipped to work with clients who identified as lesbian or gay. The discussion highlights the lack of formal and in-service training in this practice area. Implications for social work education are discussed.

Keywords

Lesbian and gay clients preparedness to practise sexual minorities social work practitioners Vietnam

Introduction

Sexual minorities in Vietnam live precarious lives. Same-sex relationships were, not too long ago, portrayed by Vietnamese state media as a ‘social evil’ (Blanc, 2005; Horton, 2014: 963). While same-sex behaviour is not criminalised in Vietnam, sexual minorities are given very little space in Vietnamese society and in the nation’s legal system. Although the 2014 Law on Marriage and Family does not expressly prohibit same-sex partnerships, it also does not recognise same-sex marriage (Luong and Pham, 2015). By and large, prejudicial attitudes towards sexual minorities are prevalent (Le and Yu, 2019). A national study with young Vietnamese found that a majority of the respondents regarded sexual minorities as unacceptable (Nguyen and Blum, 2014). Other studies found that 87 percent of Vietnamese public respondents had limited understanding of leasbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights (Nguyen, 2012) and only 33.7 percent supported same-sex marriage (Institute of Sociology, 2013). This presents a challenge for social work as a profession sworn to uphold human rights, respect for diversity and social justice for all (Henrickson, 2018). It is, therefore, necessary to examine the extent to which Vietnamese social work practitioners are prepared to grapple with the issues facing sexual minorities.

This article examines the training and level of preparedness of Vietnamese social work practitioners to practise with sexual minorities. This study aimed to contribute to the enhancement of the quality and responsiveness of services provided to sexual minorities. It is envisioned that the insights from this study will help to inform the development of policies and education of social work practitioners so that they can be better prepared to practise with such populations.

While the interest was to investigate the preparedness of Vietnamese social work practitioners to work with sexual and gender minorities, this study focused on the preparedness to practise with individuals who identify as lesbian or gay. This focus has to do with the limitations of current research methodology and the perceived culturally bound conceptual grasp of the intended participants. It is not, in any way, meant to deny the importance of preparedness for work with bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender and intersex people.

Research on Asian social workers’ preparedness to practise with sexual minorities has hitherto been limited. Only a handful of studies were found in the literature at the time of writing. Among them was a mixed-methods study with 89 Singaporean social workers which reported that most of the participants did not feel that they had adequate knowledge and skills to practise with sexual minority clients (Teh et al., 2018). The study also reported the absence of specific training focusing on sexual minorities for the social work profession in Singapore (Teh et al., 2018). The situation appears to be not significantly better in Western contexts. An online survey of 1018 North American LGBTQ social work students found low levels of readiness to practise with sexual and gender minorities (Craig et al., 2016). Inclusion of sexual minorities contents in courses and positive handling of LGBTQ issues in the classroom were found to be positively associated with the participants’ readiness for such practice (Craig et al., 2016). However, the findings of this study indicated that such contents were not widely available, with less than a third of the participants reporting sexual minority contents in their social work programmes (Craig et al., 2016). In another survey conducted with 3001 health and social care staff (including social workers) in the United Kingdom, one in 10 participants admitted to not feeling confident in their ability to understand and meet the needs of lesbian, gay and bisexual clients, while a quarter were not confident in their ability to respond to the needs of transgender people (Somerville, 2015). A study involving 183 school health professionals including nurses, counsellors and social workers in the United States found that the practitioners ‘may not be well prepared to provide safe and supportive school environments’ (Mahdi et al., 2014: 21) for sexual and gender minority youth. Approximately, half of school counsellors and social workers reported limited or no knowledge of LGBTQ community-based organisations or knowledge of counselling on LGBTQ concerns (Mahdi et al., 2014). While confident in their abilities on the whole, the majority of school health practitioners, including social workers, reported limited or no experience in discussing behavioural health concerns or addressing harassment faced by LGBTQ students (Mahdi et al., 2014). In a small-scale qualitative study with 10 social work students in Southern England, participants reported feeling generally prepared to work with sexual minority clients (Inch, 2017). However, they did not attribute this feeling of preparedness to classroom teaching but to experience in working with sexual minority clients on placement (Inch, 2017). In fact, the students in this study recalled very little classroom teaching on LGBT issues (Inch, 2017). While there appear to be similarities across the globe in terms of social workers’ general lack of preparedness for work in this area, a key difference between Western countries and a country like Vietnam is that the latter provides a less hospitable environment for sexual minorities and therefore makes such preparation a higher imperative.

Overall, the few studies that have been undertaken to explore social workers’ preparedness to practise with sexual minorities were mostly done in Western contexts. There is a little knowledge in this area about Asian social workers. The findings of the study conducted with Singaporean social workers cannot be generalised for practitioners in other Asian countries where social work is less developed as a profession and where Western influence is less pronounced.

Social work is in its early stages of development as a profession in Vietnam. Social work was only officially introduced as a formal title into the national social welfare system in 2010 (Nguyen and Nguyen, 2017; Tran, 2015). The first national undergraduate social work curriculum was approved by the Ministry of Education and Training in 2004 (Tran, 2015). However, by the end of 2015, more than 50 undergraduate, four masters and two doctorate programmes had been established across the country (Hoang et al., 2019; Tran, 2015). The core curriculum incorporates key requirements of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) such as social work theories and skills, practice models and field education (Han et al., 2016; Hugman et al., 2009). Although the programmes are subscribed to the global framework adopted by IASSW and IFSW, the coverage of content related to diversity and sexual minority is not mandatory for social work programmes in Vietnam. As of this writing, only one Hanoi-based university offered social work students an elective course specifically focused on sexual and gender minorities. This course was developed in 2013 in an effort by the school to promote diversity in the social work programme. It is this particular context that prompted the need for this study. Given that social workers may encounter sexual minorities in the course of everyday practice, it is necessary to explore the social work practitioners’ preparedness to work with this segment of the population. The notable gap in the literature highlights the need to undertake the current study to explore training and preparedness among Vietnamese social work practitioners in this area.

Methodology

The findings presented in this article were part of a larger study that investigated Vietnamese social work practitioners’ attitudes and perceptions of practice with sexual minorities. The study adopted a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design (Creswell and Clark, 2018), employing a paper-based survey followed by semi-structured interviews. This article draws on the findings related to Vietnamese social work practitioners’ perceptions of education and preparedness to practise with sexual minorities.

Procedure

After ethics approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of South Australia, the data collection was carried out in Vietnam from June to September 2018. The first author approached social work organisations, social work departments, social welfare and social protection centres in Hanoi to seek permission to conduct the research with their staff. A total of 14 organisations granted written permission to allow us to carry out the study at their agencies.

A research package, including a participant information sheet and paper questionnaire, was distributed to the potential participants. The practitioners were informed that they could complete the questionnaires in private at a time and place of their convenience and return them in sealed envelopes through a locked box placed within the premises of the organisation. The filling out and submission of the completed questionnaire was taken as an indication of voluntary consent to participate in the survey. Survey participants who wished to volunteer to participate in the interviews were given the option of providing their contact details for the purpose of allowing the researcher to contact them. The researcher contacted the prospective participants through their preferred contact method (phone call or email). The locations and schedules of interviews were agreed between researcher and participants. The interviews were audio-recorded and lasted approximately 1–3 hours each.

Paper-based survey

The researchers developed six items to explore participants’ perceptions of education, preparedness and comfort level in working with sexual minority clients. These items were administered using a 6-point Likert-type scale, ranging from ‘1 = Strongly disagree’ to ‘6 = Strongly agree’. The questionnaire also consisted of questions to investigate whether practitioners had any previous education and training about sexual minorities. Three different forms of learning were considered in this study, including academic courses, professional development training and independent learning activities. In addition, there were questions to gather the participants’ demographic information such as age, gender, highest social work qualification, years of practice, practice fields and practice settings.

The questionnaire was reviewed by two social work researchers and pilot tested with five volunteer social work practitioners to identify any necessary modification. The pilot test undertaken for this survey was intended to improve the clarity of the questions and the questionnaire’s format. It did not focus on testing for statistical accuracy. They were asked to provide feedback on their experience in responding to the questionnaire, with a focus on particular aspects such as the wording and content of the questions, the sequence of the questions, and the length of the questionnaire. After the pilot test, the questionnaire was revised in line with the feedback gathered. The returned questionnaires from this pilot test were not included in the final survey dataset and analysis.

Survey data were encoded and analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences software (SPSS version 25). Descriptive statistics were utilised to report demographic information of the sample, frequencies and percentages of the responses to each item regarding perception of education and preparedness to practise with sexual minorities. Since the survey tool had not been formally validated, each item was analysed individually, and the Likert-type scale responses were collapsed to report the overall amount of agreement and disagreement with each item.

Semi-structured interviews

Following the survey, interviews were carried out. The interviews were in a semi-structured format, which involves the flexible administration of an ordered set of questions (Doody and Noonan, 2013). This allows the researcher to explore and probe issues which may emerge during the interview for the purpose of gaining a greater depth of understanding of the topic (Doody and Noonan, 2013). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 practitioners from the pool of survey respondents who indicated interest in participating in the next phase of the study.

An interview guide was developed. The guide included questions relating to the participants’ background information, their perception of education and preparedness to practise with sexual minorities, as well as their previous education and training about this population if any. The interview questions were designed to be clearly worded, non-leading and participant-oriented.

All the interviews were carried out in Vietnamese and then transcribed in Vietnamese. Only the parts of transcriptions which went on to be used in this article were translated into English. A back-translation procedure (Jones et al., 2001) was employed for these segments to ensure the fidelity of translations. First, the English version was translated into Vietnamese by the researcher, who is bilingual in English and Vietnamese. The translated version was then blindly translated back into English by an independent Vietnamese social work researcher who was proficient in English and had never seen the original quotations. A comparison was made, and changes were introduced as needed to correct any mistranslation and ensure consistency.

The transcriptions of interviews were imported into NVivo (version 12) and analysed following a thematic technique (Braun et al., 2019). After gaining familiarity with the data, the researcher formulated the initial codes utilising both inductive and deductive approaches. Deductive coding was employed in the first instance. This top-down, theory-driven coding approach fits with the explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. The researcher coded the interview data based on a set of preconceived ideas embodied by the key findings drawn from the quantitative data. Following deductive coding, a bottom-up, data-driven inductive approach was employed to detect themes that emerged from the dataset itself. This approach was meant to enable the researcher to identify themes that may have been missed in the deductive coding process and gain a greater depth of understanding of the data. Codes were collated into themes that were then defined and labelled for analysis.

Participants

A total of 305 participants returned the survey, yielding a response rate of 70.4 percent. Eleven cases were removed due to excessive missing data. The responses from participants (n = 2) who identified as sexual minorities were also removed. This is necessary to create a more homogeneous sample for this study, given that the non-heterosexual sample was too small to make any meaningful comparisons. A final sample of 292 participants was included in the analysis. Table 1 summarises the demographic information of the survey sample.

Table 1.

Demographic information of survey participants (N = 292).

Demographics	n	%
Gender
Male	101	34.6
Female	191	65.4
Age
20–29	106	36.3
30–39	127	43.5
40–49	54	18.5
Above 50	2	0.7
Social work education level
None	18	6.2
Training or short courses	151	51.7
College	31	10.6
Bachelor	69	23.6
Master	23	7.9
Years of practice
Below 1 year	31	10.6
1–3 years	80	27.4
Above 3–5 years	67	22.9
Above 5–10 years	60	20.5
Above 10 years	54	18.5
Practice setting
Public	227	77.7
Private	65	22.3
Practice field
Child welfare	61	20.9
Aged care	41	14.0
Family violence	14	4.8
Mental health	36	12.3
Hospital social work	45	15.4
Social protection	66	22.6
Disability	15	5.1
Sexual minorities	4	1.4
Other	10	3.4

The majority of survey participants were either in the 20–29 age group (36.3%) or 30–39 age group (43.5%). The mean age was 33 (SD = 6.83), ranging from 23 to 53 years old. There were more females (65.4%) than males (34.6%). The social work education of the survey participants came in the form of short courses or in-service training (51.7%), a college degree (10.6%), a bachelor’s degree (23.6%) or a master’s degree (7.9%). While nearly half of participants (43.4%) reported having over 3–10 years of social work experience, 10.6 percent had less than 1 year of practice. Most of the participants (77.7%) worked in public sector (governmental organisations or agencies). The participants were employed in the field of social protection (22.6%), child welfare (20.9%), hospital social work (15.4%), aged care (14.0%), mental health (12.3%), disability (5.1%), family violence (4.8%) and other settings (3.4%).

After the survey, 12 interviews were undertaken with practitioners who completed the questionnaires and expressed interest in participating in the follow-up interviews. Table 2 presents the pseudonyms, field of practice and practice setting of the interview participants. There were nine female and three male interview participants. The participants, aged between 23 and 40 years old, had been practising from 1 year to more than 16 years. The participants were employed in a diverse range of practice fields (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Demographic information of interview participants.

Pseudonym	Gender	Practice sector	Practice field
P01	Female	Private	Sexual minorities
P02	Female	Public	Social protection
P03	Male	Private	Family violence
P04	Female	Private	Child welfare
P05	Female	Private	Sexual minorities
P06	Male	Private	Child welfare
P07	Female	Public	Disability
P08	Female	Public	Hospital social work
P09	Female	Public	Hospital social work
P10	Female	Private	Child welfare
P11	Male	Public	Mental health
P12	Female	Private	Child welfare

Results

The data presented here are drawn from a survey and semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data provided a broad understanding of the practitioners’ perception of education, preparedness and comfort to practise with sexual minorities. The qualitative data afforded a more in-depth understanding of these perceptions. Both quantitative and qualitative data are discussed together in a side-by-side narrative approach (Creswell and Clark, 2018: 226).

The findings of this study will be discussed in two subsections, with the first outlining the participants’ education and training about sexual minorities, and the second presenting the participants’ self-reported comfort level and preparedness to practise with sexual minorities.

Education and training about sexual minorities

Questions around education and training on the topic of sexual minorities were included in the survey and in the interviews. Three different forms of learning were considered in this study: academic courses, formal professional development training and independent learning activities. Responses from relevant questions are presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Education and training about sexual minorities (N = 292).

Education and training	n (%)
Had academic courses covering sexual minority contents	33 (11.3)
Had professional training covering sexual minority contents	51 (17.5)
Had independent learning activities about sexual minorities	116 (39.7)

Only 11.3 percent of survey participants reported having academic courses that covered sexual minority content in their social work programmes and 17.5 percent reported receiving professional development through seminars and workshops about sexual minorities. Consistent with these responses, the majority of survey participants (94.9%) agreed, to some extent, that there was not enough social work training on sexual minority content, and 72.6 percent expressed interest in receiving additional training about sexual minorities.

It is worth noting that coverage of sexual minority content is not mandatory for social work programmes in Vietnam. Only one university in Hanoi offered social work students a course specifically focused on sexual minorities as an elective. It is thus understandable that only a few of the interviewees indicated that they received formal training about sexual minorities as part of their social work degrees. Quotes from the interviews provide a clearer view of what occurs in the formal training of social workers:

I have to admit that during my four-year social work bachelor program, I had no idea about homosexuals. I didn’t gain any knowledge or understanding about homosexuals through my education. Maybe the social work programs now are different, but mine was one of the very first [social work] programs in Vietnam. Homosexuality wasn’t taught much in the program back then. (P03)

I wasn’t taught anything about homosexuals . . . Honestly, I didn’t learn anything that related to homosexuals in my social work program. (P06)

These accounts suggest that the social work programmes of the participants did not adequately prepare them for work with sexual minorities. While both quotes came from interview participants who completed their social work bachelor programmes between 5 and 10 years earlier, there was no indication that the experiences of those who graduated from such programmes more recently were any different.

For the few interview participants who reported receiving formal education about sexual minorities in their social work programmes, some remarked that the topic of sexual minorities was just occasionally mentioned in a few courses and was not discussed systematically:

In the course on gender and development, the lecturer made mention of homosexuals, very quickly and not thoroughly. They [homosexuals] were barely mentioned in other courses or, if mentioned, were just brought up in small examples. (P07)

. . . For example, in the course on community development, the lecturer talked about homosexuals. He mentioned about them very quickly, skimming through like a wind. (P09)

The situation appeared to be similar when it came to professional development. Interview accounts revealed that some organisations regularly carried out professional development for their staff. However, sexual minority contents were not covered in such training or, if noted, only mentioned in passing. It should be noted that most of the interview participants who reported receiving little to no professional development covering sexual minority contents were those who worked in public sector or governmental organisations. Here are some of the ways interview participants described their experiences of in-house professional development training:

My organisation has not yet organised any training on homosexuals for the staff. (P11)

I have never got any professional training on this topic. In my department, there is no one who ever got any training about homosexuals as well . . . Recently, I attended a short course on social work in hospital. In the course, they referred to such groups as children, the victims of abuse, the disabled, the patients suffering from accidents, difficult circumstances or financial situations. The course made no mention of homosexuals at all. (P08)

There are some training courses carried out by my organisation. For example, [we had] a course on social work in general, social work with children, social work with women, social work in aged care, or social work with survivors of domestic violence. The main purpose of such courses is to improve professional skills for the staff . . . I barely came across content of social work with homosexuals in such courses. I noticed the teachers sometimes referred to homosexuals, but very quickly, not sharing a lot about them . . . It may be because they wanted to focus on the main content of the courses and on the groups that my organisation mainly works with. (P02)

According to these participants, their professional development often focused on those who were considered as their organisations’ main or potential client group, such as children, women, disabled people, elderly people and homeless people. The lack of sexual minority contents in both academic social work programmes and professional development can explain why most of the survey participants felt that there was not enough social work training on sexual minorities.

Most of survey participants (88.4%) supported the idea that social work education programmes should include content about sexual minorities. In line with this, a number of interview participants underscored the importance of and expressed support for the inclusion of sexual minority content in academic social work programmes, saying:

I think social work programs at universities should have the courses covering that content [homosexuality/homosexuals], so that students could be trained with necessary skills to work well with homosexual clients when they graduate. (P02)

Obviously, social workers have to know about homosexuals . . . There is nothing existing independently. A social worker working in the area of domestic violence may encounter homosexual clients who are suffering from domestic violence. In those cases, social workers need to have knowledge about homosexuals and skills to work with them. . . . I think the mainstream social work programs should have courses about homosexuals. (P03)

The education program should be updated to meet the needs of society and deal with emerging issues . . . There could be a course like social work with homosexuals. If I could study such a course in university, I would gain relevant knowledge and skills, and would feel more confident working with them. (P11)

Independent learning about sexual minorities was the most common means of training among participants (see Table 3). Almost 40 percent of survey participants reported acquiring knowledge about sexual minorities on their own through reading articles, searching for information on the Internet, watching videos or having discussions with colleagues. Qualitative data obtained from the interviews provide some insights into the kind of independent learning activities participants engaged in. When asked how they learned about the topic, a number of interviewees indicated that they obtained information about sexual minorities in newspapers, social media and the Internet. Online newspapers and websites were the most frequently used sources. A few participants reported accessing relevant information from organisations specialising in sexual minorities or speaking with acquaintances who identified as lesbian or gay. Participants noted how much easier it has become to access such information about sexual minorities in recent years. It was not as easy for some participants 10 or 15 years ago when computer technology and Internet access, as well as materials about sexual minorities in the Vietnamese language, were not yet widely available in Vietnam. Recently, online information on sexual minorities in Vietnamese has become more accessible. One participant remarked, ‘It is now the information age, if one needs just basic information on homosexuals, it is available on Google . . . There are quite a good amount of sources about that’ (P03).

Comfort level and preparedness to practise with sexual minorities

Arguably, social work practitioners’ preparedness to practise with sexual minorities is partly a function of their education and training in work with this population. But was this, in fact, reflected in how prepared they felt they were to undertake such work? Four items were included in the questionnaire to explore the participants’ comfort level and their perceptions of preparedness to practise with sexual minorities. The response distributions for each item are presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Preparedness to work with sexual minorities.

A component of the preparedness explored in this study is the participants’ level of comfort in working with sexual minorities. As shown in Figure 1, a significant proportion (37.3%) of participants agreed to some extent that they would feel uncomfortable working with sexual minority clients. Speaking of the prospect of working with sexual minority clients, one interview participant remarked:

Probably I would feel a bit uncomfortable . . . For the groups of clients that I have been trained with, at least I can imagine how to practise with them. I feel more confident. For homosexuals, I don’t feel confident and comfortable, even a bit panicked if I encounter them in my practice. It is not fear, I just feel a bit worried, . . . I don’t know what I can do to support them or where the resources are to link them to. (P08)

This quotation reflects a deep level of discomfort over the prospect of working with sexual minorities, resulting from a sense of unpreparedness and inadequacy arising from a perceived lack of competence in working with sexual minority clients.

The majority of survey participants (76.7%) did not feel prepared to provide social work services to sexual minority clients if encountering them. More than two-thirds of the survey participants felt that they did not have adequate knowledge (74.6 %) and skills (77%) for working with sexual minorities. In line with these findings, interview participants spoke of their lack of preparedness for practice with sexual minorities:

I don’t think I am competent enough . . . I don’t have much knowledge about homosexuals, as well as skills to work with them . . . I am not sure I have adequate professional capacity to be able to effectively communicate with and support them. (P07)

I am not confident that I can work with them . . . First, I have no experience working with homosexuals. Second, I have not been fully equipped with professional knowledge about them. Things that I know about them are mainly from what I have learned by myself . . . I haven’t found any official materials mentioning about how to support them nor the related policy and legal documents that I could use. I am clueless as to how to practise with them. (P09)

It will be difficult for me [to work with sexual minorities] . . . because I have never been trained with knowledge and skills to work with them, nor have I had prior experience interacting with them. It is like a zero number. I am afraid that they may feel discontented and not open up to me due to my lack of appropriate communication skills. (P08)

The accounts of these participants highlight their perceived lack of knowledge and skills for work with sexual minorities. This included the lack of ‘knowledge about homosexuals’ as well as relevant policies and laws affecting them and the lack of ‘skills to work with them’ such as how to ‘effectively communicate with and support them’. Such perceived lack of knowledge and skills may, conceivably, affect anyone’s level of preparedness to work with sexual minorities. In other countries and cultures where sexual minorities are more openly accepted, the problem may be in terms of lack of training among professionals, but, for the participants in this study the problem is more fundamental. Their sense of preparedness, or lack thereof, appears to be rooted in the sheer lack of exposure to sexual minorities such that participants did not feel that they knew enough about this population group on an existential level, to say nothing of pertinent policies and laws and even something as pragmatic as how to communicate with them. The accounts reflected concerns over lack of training about sexual minorities, with the participants expressing how they had ‘not been fully equipped with professional knowledge’ or ‘never been trained’ to undertake such work. One interviewee specifically attributed her perceived lack of preparedness to the lack of education and training about sexual minorities, saying, ‘I don’t feel prepared [to practise with sexual minorities] . . . I haven’t been trained to do that’ (P02). The self-reported lack of competence could thus arguably be related to the participants’ education and training covering sexual minority contents.

Discussion

The findings indicated that most practitioners in this study felt ill-equipped to work with sexual minorities. The majority felt that they did not have enough knowledge and skills for work with sexual minorities and were thus inadequately prepared for practice with these populations. Understandably, this mirrored their level of confidence in their ability to work with sexual minorities. There was a palpable discomfort among a good proportion of the practitioners with the prospect of working with sexual minorities. They attributed much of their discomfort to the sense of inadequacy that comes with the perceived lack of competence in working with sexual minority clients. This echoes the findings in previous studies of social work students and practitioners in other contexts (Craig et al., 2016; Logie et al., 2007; Somerville, 2015; Teh et al., 2018), which showed that social workers and social workers-in-training had low levels of preparedness and confidence for practice with sexual minority clients.

The discomfort and self-reported lack of preparedness to work with sexual minorities that the participants felt perhaps can be understood in the context of their professional training. Very few practitioners received formal education and training about sexual minorities. The lack of sufficient training about sexual minorities has been recognised as an issue faced by social work students and practitioners in many other contexts such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Singapore (Bell and Salcedo, 2014; Craig et al., 2016; Inch, 2017; Krieglstein, 2002; Teh et al., 2018). The findings of this study suggest that this is also the case of social work practitioners in Vietnam. As noted earlier, sexual minority content is not mandated in formal social work programmes in Vietnam. Only one university in Hanoi offered a separate course focused specifically on sexual minorities as an elective course for social work students. This partly explains why only a few participants reported receiving formal education about sexual minorities in their social work programmes. The practitioners who indicated that they were exposed to such content could only recall minimal coverage on sexual minorities in their programmes. More often than not, the topic was simply mentioned in passing or, at best, as a case scenario for small group discussion. It appears that a little effort was given to the building of practitioners’ skills in working with sexual minority clients. These findings suggest that scant attention and priority is given to sexual minorities in mainstream social work education in Vietnam. It may be that sexual minorities have not been considered a significant potential client group for social workers.

These findings should be understood in the context of Vietnam where, as of this writing, a tertiary qualification in social work is not an essential requirement to be able to occupy social work positions and practise social work. Holders of any social science degree other than social work can gain professional qualification with certificates of training in social work. According to the National Plan on Developing the Social Work Profession in Vietnam (known as Plan 32), the training and retraining of those who are already practising social work are seen as a vital part of the country’s strategy to promote the development of the social work profession that takes into consideration social and economic realities and builds on the existing welfare system (Tran, 2015). In this study, only a little over 42 percent of the survey participants had a formal degree in social work while nearly 52 percent had in-service training or short courses and more than 6 percent had no formal training at all (see Table 1). For most of the participants, it could be said that they only started learning about social work (and, perhaps, sexual minorities) in on the job training.

Professional development about sexual minorities, however, appears to be a rarity in Vietnam. The interview responses indicated that only a few organisations provided in-service training for their staff about sexual minorities. Given this, not only did participants receive minimal exposure to information about sexual minorities in their formal social work education, but they also had very little exposure in their continuing professional development. This is similar to what Krieglstein (2002) reported in a study with North American social workers. It is noteworthy that the majority of participants in this study who reported exposure to sexual minority content as part of employer-sponsored professional development training were those working in non-governmental organisations. In-service training provided in the public sector or governmental organisations mainly focused on what may be considered traditional client groups such as the homeless, the elderly, disabled people or disadvantaged women and children. Given that the lack of knowledge of the participants starts with their lack of exposure to sexual minorities, the preparation of social work practitioners for work in this area can (and, perhaps, should) start with something as basic as being exposed to and learning from members of this population in the course of their professional training. It must be noted that the two – the so-called ‘traditional client groups’ and sexual minorities – are not mutually exclusive. Professional training informed by an intersectional perspective (Mattsson, 2014) would highlight the intersections of gender and sexuality with poverty and homelessness, age, disability and women’s and children’s issues.

Independent learning about sexual minorities was the most common means of training among participants. This is consistent with the findings of Ramirez (2012), who observed that social workers proactively engaged in self-directed learning about sexual minorities to inform their practice. This may be because this was the main way they could gain knowledge about the topic in the absence of relevant content in their formal education and professional development.

Limitations

This work has several limitations. First, the study was conducted with social work practitioners in a number of Hanoi-based organisations where permission could be obtained. Such a non-probability sample limits the generalisability of the findings to social work practice across Vietnam. Second, the lack of psychometric testing limits the statistical analysis beyond descriptive information. Future studies would benefit from a validated tool to measure the self-perceived preparedness and comfort level in practising with sexual minorities among social workers. Third, the participants in the survey and interviews were self-selected. It is possible that practitioners who responded to the survey and expressed interest in participating in the interviews may have had a more-than-average interest in sexual minority issues. Such self-selection bias may have limited the data and insights that were gained.

Conclusion

Vietnamese social work practitioners are bound to encounter sexual minority clients at certain points in their practice. For this reason, they need to be equipped with knowledge and skills on how to work with sexual minorities. The findings of this study suggest that the current formal social work education and professional development programmes in Vietnam, by and large, do not provide social work practitioners with such knowledge and skills. Thus, there is a mismatch between social work practitioners’ needs and what is provided to them in terms of education and training. There is an argument for such content to be incorporated in the education and training of social workers in Vietnam. While independent learning initiatives of individual practitioners are laudable, they cannot stand in the place of formal education and training. The acquisition of appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to serve sexual minorities, as with other client groups, cannot be left to the personal inclinations and interests of individual practitioners.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the practitioners who graciously dedicated their time and effort to respond to the questionnaires and participate in the interviews.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research project was funded by the University of South Australia President’s Scholarship (UPS).

ORCID iDs

Trang Mai Le

Nilan Yu

Author biographies

Trang Mai Le, PhD, is a research assistant at the University of South Australia. Her research interests include sexual health and critical practice with minority groups.

Nilan Yu, PhD, is Programme Director of the Master of Social Work at the University of South Australia. His research focuses on critical social work, disability and human service delivery.

Fiona Buchanan, PhD, is a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia. Her areas of research include mothering, child wellbeing, and the effects of domestic violence on women and children.

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