Social Work with People Practicing Same-Sex ... - ILGA Europe

“Dark Nights” Festival,
Kyiv, 2008
1 Devlin Will, Keogh Peter, Nutland
Will, Weatherburn Peter. THE FIELD
GUIDE. Applying Making it count
to health promotion activity with
homosexually active men. 2003
www.sigmaresearch.org.uk .
2 Gold Standards for undertaking
detached work with homosexually
active men// Glynn Thomas Terence
Higgins Trust, London
3 Kelly J.A., et al. Randomised,
controlled, community-level HIVprevention
intervention for sex-risk
behaviour among homosexual men
in US cities. The Lancet. Vol 350.
November 22, 1997.
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who have the communications skills and knowledge needed for an efficient
outreach work; the supervisor himself, who recruits the outreach workers,
trains them, identifies the leaders among the trained outreach workers and
together with them forms the groups from other outreach workers. Also the
model includes the component of training for the outreach worker groups
under a special training programme (the training workshops are conducted by
the supervisor, leaders of the outreach worker groups and the invited trainers;
outreach workers are tested to determine their knowledge level before and
after the training); and then organization and performance of outreach
work 1 .
This model is interesting because internal documents, including registration
documents (logs, registers), rules for team and outreach work, job descriptions
and schedules of outreach work are being developed within it. Afterwards the model
functions with the participation of MSM themselves, who are trained to work as peer
educators (the training workshops are conducted by the group leaders and other
outreach workers). As this model already has a certain control factor in the person of
supervisor, which is mitigated by the freedom to attract the target group members, it
envisages relatively formal time-table and structure. The working team meetings should
be held at least once a week; individual and group supervision is to be performed at
least once a month in order to analyze the work done, to increase the efficiency of
counselling skills of outreach workers and to prevent the burnout syndrome. So, the
supervisor in this model should help outreach workers to turn mistakes into the source
of valuable experience. One of the strengths of this model is implementation of regular
behavioural surveys among the target group, which helps to neutralize the formal nature
of this structure and to timely respond to the changes in the MSM environment.
American researchers from California University and San Francisco Centre for AIDS
Prevention Studies single out the formal and informal MSM outreach work models. The
formal model includes all activities of an outreach team to attract clients to prevention
projects and any activities beyond the organization, such as information distribution
and counselling at the popular MSM community locations (so, the American formal
outreach work with MSM is similar to what the British call a “detached work”. 2 )
An informal outreach model includes the format of free discussions about safer sex,
where young MSM tell their friends about its relevance and necessity. This component
resembles the J. Kelly project “Public Opinion Leaders” 3 , which envisages performance
of studies in the locations of social programmes“ interventions in order to identify the
most influential and respected MSM involved in the project activities.
Ukrainian Approach
In Ukraine it is still hard to single out some specific models practiced by the outreach
teams. However, the forms of outreach work with MSM are sufficiently clearly defined
and can vary by the outreach team depending on the regional characteristics:
Form of work Place of work Principles of work
Open At the popular MSM community
venues (“pleshki“, parks, public
toilets, etc.)
Semi-open At the LGBT-friendly locations (cafе,
bars, night clubs, etc.)
Closed At the closed gathering places
(apartments, summer houses, etc.)
Networking In the social networks and reference
groups.
Internet
outreach
Principle of equality and
accessibility.
Limited access principle.
Target principle.
Snowball principle.
In the web. Principle of transfer of
virtual contacts to the real
life.